“We’ll use a lever. The duplication of the circumstances, Beth.”
As they left the restaurant, the first fat drops splattered down on pavement still warm from the sun of the day. Thunder was a continuous bombardment, louder than the city’s roar. The sky was lit green by lightning as they hurried to the car.
Thunder was raucous most of the way out to the down-at-the-heel neighborhood where Beth had lived. By the time they arrived, the rain was coming down in hard sheets, muffling the electric display, drowning the windshield wipers. The headlights peered only a short distance into the gray curtain, and Brock had to drive slowly.
“There’s the drive,” she said. He turned in. It was an old house that had been cut into four apartments. Lights showed in one downstairs apartment.
“Did he park about here?”
“Yes.”
“Did he walk out behind you?”
“No-o-o. I remember I. had to lock the apartment door. He’d already gone out to the car. He was standing by my side with the door open.”
Reaching around into the back of the coupe, Brock took out a small suitcase. “Now I’m a prop man,” he said. “Take this up to the door and then turn around and come back across the yard with it. I’ll stand outside the car the way he did.”
She carried the suitcase up to the door. She turned and walked back to the car. He put the bag behind the seat, closed the door after her, went around and got behind the wheel. She told herself Roger was beside her, that they were starting off on a trip, that the clock had been turned back. It wasn’t any good. Brock backed out into the street, turned toward town. He came to the Culver Road intersection.
“Turn left here?”
“I... don’t know. I can’t feel anything. I’m trying to imagine how it was, and I can’t.”
“I’m Roger. This is a borrowed car. I’m nervous and excited. You’re asking me where we’re going.”
“No. I can’t do it.”
He drove around the block, back up Shennatry Street to the apartment drive. He parked in the same place, reached into the back again, and brought out a pint bottle of whisky. As he peeled off the plastic and twisted the cork loose, he said, “This is going to be a little warm and nasty, so don’t take it too fast.”
“I don’t want any.”
“Do you trust me?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, in this bottle is a substance noted for busting down walls between the conscious and subconscious mind. You’re tensed up. Trying too hard. So take some of Dr. Ellison’s Elixir, Beth.”
He handed her the bottle. She tilted it up. It was warm and nasty. She took two swallows before her throat seemed to clog. She shuddered. “Ugh!”
“Take some deep breaths and repeat the dosage.”
Beth choked down two more swallows.
“Now, take a break. I don’t want it going down so fast you get sick. Here’s a cigarette for a chaser.”
Beth leaned back in the seat. The liquor seemed to hit her stomach and expand, sending fingers of warmth out through her arms and legs.
“Leading you into paths of sin,” he said. “Got any symptoms?”
“My lips feel numb and rubbery.”
“That could be called one of the classic symptoms. Knock it again.”
“Phoo,” she said, but she swallowed again. This time she managed three deep swallows before the gag reflex closed her throat. He took the bottle from her, held it up, silhouetted against a street light, then recapped it and put it in the glove compartment.
“That should do it. Any more and you’ll develop an insane craving for the stuff.”
She stretched. Her hands looked far away. She bit her lips, said, “Umm.”
“Umm?”
“You know, I like you, Ellison.”
“That, too, is a classic symptom.”
“I mean it, darn it. You’re kinda sweet. Nobody else believes me. Nobody else truss me. Trusts me. But I don’t want any rebound. Got a wife and kiddies, Ellison?”
“Had a wife once, Beth. She died about five years ago.”
“Funny about people dying. Going away from you. No chance to say the things you should have said. Gone. Taking away pieces of you. Don’t want any rebound, Ellison. Listen to me, Brock. Throwing myself at your head. Brock. Funny name. Sounds like hitting a couple boards together.” She giggled. “Gee, I’m getting crocked, Brock. Crock-Brock.”
“Now take the little bag and try your walk again, Beth.”
The rain against her face steadied her a little. The world was a warm, swarmy place, with street lights soft-swaying, and tippy wet grass underfoot.
She stumbled as she got into the car and giggled again. He backed the car out. Got to try, she thought. Got to try to do what he wants me to do. She closed her eyes, and then snapped them open quickly as the car seemed to tip over.
It’s that night again. And Roger. What was the car like? Green dash lights. That’s something, anyway. Something I didn’t have before. Couldn’t remember being in the car before. Where does he want to go on this trip? Why take a trip in the middle of the night in this kind of weather? Cold. Rain icing the windshield. Heater blowing against her ankles.
“Left,” she said in a faraway voice as he reached the intersection. Left, toward town, by the haloed street lights, with wetness funny against the asphalt like when you squint your eyes and look at the moon.
“Just a trip,” Roger said. “Get away for a while. Don’t have to get heated up about it, Beth.”
“Did you steal this car? Did you?”
“You think I’m a crook? What gives you that idea?”
“I don’t know what you are anymore, Rog.”
She rode in Brock’s car and she could hear the thin, faraway voices of that acid conversation. There is no spite and no hopelessness like that which shows through the words of the unhappily married, she thought.
“Things will be fine this time.”
“Like every other time.”
“This is different. You’ll see.”
“Let me out. I’ll get a bus to Marian’s house. I was silly to let you talk me into this. There’s something wrong with it.”
She lifted her eyes to the road ahead and said to Brock, “We stopped for a light here. The car skidded a little. I tried to open the door and get out. He wouldn’t let me. He hurt my arm.”
Brock drove on. She had the feeling of wrongness. She waited and then said, “We didn’t come this way. We turned.”
“How far back?”
“I don’t know.”
Her arm had hurt. Brock went back a dozen blocks, made a U turn and went on again. She had been rubbing the arm. Roger had taken the turn too fast for the ice, and it had thrown her against the door. That would mean a left turn.
“He turned left. I don’t know where.”
“I’ll try Somerset first.”
The neon of beer joints winked red and blue and green in the rain.
“What’s this stop you have to make, Rog?”
“I’ll tell you when we get there. I want you to do something for me.”
“You’ve made me real anxious to do things for you, haven’t you?”
A joint’s sign flickered red. SANDY’S SANDY’S SANDY’S
And she thought of tears then, and of salt like sand crusted on the stains of old tears.
“This is the right street,” she said.