The thought crept in again, as it had several times today, like a little black snake at a picnic: what if Jack weren't one of those three men?
"He is, though," she said to Drummer. His eyes were searching the room, his mouth clamped tightly on the nipple. "It's him in the picture. Didi knew it was him." She frowned. Her head hurt when Didi's face came to mind; it was like holding a metal photograph with saw-toothed edges. And another little black snake crawled into her realm of summer where was the bitch?
The bitch knew all about Lord Jack and Freestone. Benedict Bedelia had told her. So where was the bitch right now, as the clock ticked toward three?
When she found Jack, they would go away somewhere safe. A place where they could have a farm, maybe grow some weed on an acre or two, kick back in the lamplight and look at the stars. It would be a mellow place, that farm where the three of them would live in a triad of love and harmony.
She wanted that so very very badly.
Mary finished feeding Drummer. She burped him, and his eyelids were getting heavy. Hers were, too. She lay with Drummer in the crook of her arm, and she could feel his heart: drum… drum… drumming. Have to get up and bathe, she thought. Wash my hair. Decide what to wear. All those things, the heavy details of life.
She closed her eyes.
Jack was walking toward her, wearing a white robe. His golden hair hung over his shoulders, his eyes blue and clear, his face bearded and chiseled. God was at his side, in black leather. Mary could smell the sea and the aroma of pines. The light streamed through bay windows behind Jack. She knew where they were: the Thunder House, on Drakes Bay about forty miles from the Luxmore. The beautiful chapel of love, the place of the Storm Front's birth. Jack walked across the pinewood floor, his feet in Birkenstock sandals. He was smiling, his face alight with joy, and he reached out to take his gift.
"She's scared shitless," she heard God, that demon, say.
Jack's arms accepted Drummer. He opened his mouth, and the shrill ring of a telephone came out of it.
Mary sat up. Drummer was wailing.
She blinked, her brain sluggish in its turn toward thinking. Phone ringing. Phone. Right there, next to the bed. She picked up the receiver. "Yeah?"
"It's five o'clock, Mrs. Morrison."
"Okay. Thanks." The clerk hung up. Mary Terror's heart began to hammer.
The day had come.
Her clothes were damp, her fever sweat returned with a vengeance. She let Drummer cry himself out, and she left the room and got her suitcase and the 7 Eleven sack from the Cherokee. The sky was still black, tendrils of mist drifting across the parking lot. Morning stars glittered up above; it was going to be a sunny, California-groovy day. In the bathroom of number 26, Mary stripped her clothes off. Her breasts sagged, there were bruises on her knees and mottling her arms. Her thigh wound was a dark, festered crust, yellow pus glistening in the dried blood. The bite on her forearm was less severe but just as ugly. When she touched her thigh to try to squeeze out some of the infection, the pain brought fresh blisters of sweat up on her cheeks and forehead. She turned on the shower's taps, mixing the water's temperature to lukewarm, and she stepped into the shower with a new cake of soap she'd bought that smelted of strawberries.
Her shampoo, also purchased at the 7 Eleven, left her hair with the aroma of wildflowers. She'd seen an ad for it on TV, young girls with white teeth and shiny tresses. The water and suds washed the grime off her body, but Mary left her wounds alone. She had no electric dryer, so she toweled her hair and ran a comb through it. She swabbed under her arms with Secret roll-on, and taped her wounds with wide bandages. Then she dressed in a clean pair of bluejeans – painfully tight on her swollen leg, but it couldn't be helped – and a pale blue blouse with red stripes. She shrugged into a black pullover sweater that had a mothball smell in it, but it made her look not so heavy. She put on dean socks and her boots. Then she reached down to the bottom of the sack and brought out the vials of makeup.
Mary began to fix her face. It had been a while since she'd done this, and her right hand began to spasm, so she had to use the left, awkwardly. As she worked, she watched herself in the mirror. Her features were strong, and it wasn't hard to see the young girl who used to live in that face. She wished her hair were long and blond again instead of reddish-brown and cropped short. She recalled that he liked to curl her hair around his fingers. There were dark hollows, purple as bruises, beneath her eyes. Put a little more makeup on them. Now they weren't so bad. A touch of rouge on the cheeks, just a touch to give her face some color. Yes, that's good. Blue eyeshadow on the puffy lids. No, too much. She rubbed some of it off. The final touch was a light sheen of rose-colored lipstick. There. All done.
Twenty years fell away. She looked at her face in the mirror, and she saw the chick Lord Jack loved. He would love her twice as much now, when she brought him their son.
Mary was afraid. Seeing him, after all this time… the thought made her stomach churn, and she feared she might throw up in her terror, but she hung on and the sickness passed. She brushed her teeth twice, and gargled with Scope.
It was nearing six o'clock. It was time to go to Freestone and find her future.
Mary pinned the Smiley Face button, her talisman, on the front of her sweater. Then she took her suitcase out to the Cherokee, the sky just beginning to turn a whiter shade of pale. She went back for Drummer, pushed the new pacifier into his mouth, and hugged him close. Her heart was the drummer now, pounding in her chest. "I love you," she whispered to him. "Mama loves her baby." She left the key in the room and closed the door, and then she limped to the Cherokee with Drummer in her arms.
Mary started the engine in the silence of the dawn.
Seventeen minutes before Mary Terror turned the key, a Cutlass with a new radiator had roared past the community of Navato, thirty miles south of the Luxmore Motel. Laura was speeding north on I-101 at seventy miles an hour. The green hills of Marin County rose before the highway in the faint violet light, hundreds of houses nestled in their folds, houseboats on the calm water of San Pablo Bay, peace in the misty air.
There was no peace within Laura. The flesh of her face was drawn tight, her eyes glassy and sunken in her skull. The fingers of her right hand had cramped into a claw on the wheel, her body numbed by its all-night ordeal. She had slept for two hours in the office of Marco's Garage, and popped the last Black Cat between Sacramento and Vallejo. Electricity had surged through her when she'd seen a sign pointing the route to Santa Rosa. Just to the west of Santa Rosa was Mary's destination, and hers as well. The miles were ticking off, one after the other, the highway almost deserted. God help her if a trooper got on her tail; she wasn't slowing down now, not even for Jesus or the saints. Sacramento had been her last gas stop, and she'd been flying ever since.
So close, so close! God, what if Mary's already found him! she thought. Mary must've gotten there hours before! Oh God, I've got to hurry! She glanced at the speedometer, the needle nosing toward eighty and the car starting to vibrate. "Take it easy on 'er," Marco had urged before Laura had pulled out of the garage near seven-thirty. "Once a clunker, always a clunker! You go easy on the gas and maybe you'll get where you're goin'!"
She'd left him four hundred and fifty dollars richer. Mickey, the retarded kid who liked Batman, had waved at her and hollered, "Come back soon!"
SANTA ROSA, a sign said. 14 MI.
The Cutlass hurtled on as the orange ball of the sun began to rise.
WELCOME TO FREESTONE, THE HAPPY VALLEY TOWN.
Mary drove past the sign. Orange light streaked the windows of small businesses on the main thoroughfare. Grassy hills rose around the town, which had not yet awakened. It was a small place, a collection of tidy streets and buildings, a flashing caution light, a park with a bandshell. The speed limit was posted at fifteen miles an hour. Two dogs halted their sniffing on the sidewalk, and one of them began to bark noisily at Mary as she eased past. Just beyond the caution light there was a gas station – still closed, at this hour – with a pay phone out front. She pulled into the station, got out of the Cherokee, and checked the phone book.