“Vic,” a voice said, a man’s voice, a voice he didn’t know. There was a long pause then, during which it sounded like the receiver was being muffled and talking was going on.
“Yes,” Sims said. “Who is it?” It occurred to him that it was probably Marge’s boss calling from the bar, needling Sims about being a housewife or something like that. Marge’s boss, George, was a fat, good-natured Greek guy everybody liked. “Is this Big George?” Sims said. “I know what you’re going to tell me, George. You better watch your step out there.”
“Vic,” the voice said again. Sims somehow sensed it wasn’t George — though it could’ve been — and in the same instant he realized he had no earthly idea who it was or could be, but that it wasn’t good. And in the silence that followed his own name, the feeling of a vast outside world opened up in him, and scared him so that he stood up beside the wall phone and stared at his own phone number. 876-8076. This was somebody calling from far away.
“This is Vic,” Sims said stiffly. “What do you want? What’s this about?” He heard Marge’s footsteps in another room, heard her closet door close, smelled her perfume in the air.
“We’re going to kill Marge, Vic,” the man said. “If you let her out of your sight, anywhere, we’ll be waiting for her. The devil needs Marge, Vic. You’ve given up your right to her by being an asshole and a slime, by fucking somebody else. And now you have to pay for it.”
“Who is this?” Sims said.
“This is the devil calling,” the voice said. “Everybody’s a loser today.”
Someone, a woman in the background, laughed a long, witchy, raspy laugh until she started to cough, then laughed through the cough and laughed until she couldn’t stop coughing. Then a door slammed in a room at the end of the line, very far away. Sims knew who it was now. He turned and looked out the window and across the yard between his house and the Krukows’. Betty Krukow was standing at the sink, her hands down and out of sight. She looked up after an instant and saw Sims looking at her. She smiled at him through the two panes of glass and across the sunny yard with the fence in between. When Sims stared at her a moment longer, she held up a plate out of the sink, dripping with suds and dishwater, and waved it in front of her face as if it were a fan. Then her face broke into a wide laugh and she walked away from the window.
“Cleo,” Sims said. “Let me speak to Cleo. Let me speak to her right now. Right this instant.” Things didn’t have to be this way, he thought.
“He wants to speak to Cleo,” the man said to someone there where he was.
“Tell him she died,” Sims heard a woman’s voice say casually. “Like Marge.”
“She died,” the man said. “Like Marge. Who’s Marge?” he heard the man say.
“His wife, you numb-nuts,” the woman said, then laughed raucously.
“Let me speak to her,” Sims said. “If that’s Cleo, I want to talk to her. Please.”
“Don’t forget us,” the man’s voice said, suddenly very close to the receiver. Then almost immediately the connection was broken.
Sims stood holding the buzzing phone to his ear. And after a moment of looking out the window into the daylight brightening the blue shingles of the Krukows’ house and reflecting his own brown house in their kitchen window, reflecting, in fact, the very window he could see out of but not himself, Sims thought: this is not a thing that happened, not a thing Fll hear about again. Things you do pass away and are gone, and you need only to outlive them for your life to be better, steadily better. This is what you can count on.
In the chill night, the train passed slowly through another small Montana town. The business section ran along both sides of the track. Yellow crime lights were shining. Sims saw a bar with a sign that said LIVE ENTERTAINMENT and two car lots with strings of white bulbs stretched above the rows of older cars. A convenience store with customers parked into the curb was open at the end of the street. Several boys wearing football uniforms stood in front drinking beers, holding up the bottles in salute. In the rear windows of their cars, girls’ faces were looking out at the train.
Down the highway, out of town, was a motel with a white neon sign that said SKYLARK. A soaring bird was oudined in delicate blue lights. He saw a woman and a man, the woman very fat and dressed in a white shift dress, walking down the row of motel rooms to where a door was ajar with light escaping. The woman was wearing high heels. Sims thought she was probably cold.
“Can you imagine a drink, Vic?” Sims looked up and Sergeant Benton was back and wearing a big grin. She was also wearing perfume and she looked fresher, Sims thought, as though she’d had a shower since he saw her.
“I thought you’d gone to sleep,” he said. She had her big hands on her hips, and she wasn’t wearing shoes. Just stockings. Sims noticed her feet weren’t particularly big.
“Are we going to argue about this all night, or what?” Sergeant Benton said.
“I’m fresh out here,” Sims said. He held up his plastic cup. “I guess the bar’s closed now.” He thought unhappily about the flask in Marge’s purse.
“The Doris bar’s still open,” Sergeant Benton said. “No cover.”
“Where’s the Doris bar?” Sims said.
“In Doris’s suite.” Sergeant Benton raised her plucked eyebrows in an exaggerated way to let Sims know she was having some fun. “Vic’s wife wouldn’t care if he had a drink, would she?”
Marge would care, Sims thought. She’d care a lot, though Marge would certainly be happy to go herself with him and Doris if somebody were to ask her. But she was asleep and needed to get her rest for Pauline’s next crisis. Meanwhile, he was here by himself, wide awake with no chance of sleep and nothing to do but stare at a dark, cheerless landscape. Anything he decided to do he would do, no questions asked.
“She wouldn’t mind,” Sims said. “She’d come herself if she wasn’t asleep.”
“We’ll drink a toast to her.” Doris held up an imaginary glass.
“Great,” Sims said, and held up a glass himself and smiled. “Here’s to Marge.”
He followed Sergeant Benton into the lounge car, which was smoky. The snack bar was closed. Padlocks were on each of the steel cabinets. Two older men in cowboy hats and boots were arguing across a table full of beer cans. They were arguing about somebody named Heléna, a name they pronounced with a Spanish accent, “It’d be a mistake to underestimate Heléna,” one of them said. “I’ll warn you of that.”
“Oh, fuck Heléna,” the other cowboy said. “That fat, ugly bitch. I’m not afraid of her or her family.”
Across from them a young Asian woman in a sari sat holding an Asian baby. They stared up at Sergeant Benton and at Sims. The woman’s round belly was exposed and a tiny red jewel pierced her nose. She seemed frightened, Sims thought, frightened of whatever was going to happen next. He didn’t feel that way at all, and was sorry she did.
Sergeant Benton led him out into the second, rumbling vestibule, tiptoeing across in her stocking feet and into the sleeping car where the lights were turned low. As the vestibule door closed, the sound of the moving train wheels was taken far away. Sergeant Benton turned and smiled and put her finger to her lips. “People are sleeping,” she whispered.
Marge was sleeping, Sims thought, right across the hall. It made his fingers tingle and feel cold. He walked right past the little silver door and didn’t look at it. She’ll go right on sleeping, he thought, and wake up happy tomorow.
At the far end of the corridor a black man stuck his bald head out between the curtains of a private seat and looked at Sims and Doris. Doris was fitting a key into the lock of her compartment door. The black man was the porter who’d helped Marge and him with their suitcases and offered to bring them coffee in the morning. Sergeant Benton waved at him and went “shhhh.” Sims waved at him, too, though only halfheartedly. The porter, whose name was Lewis, said nothing, and drew his head back inside the curtains.