The room looked the same as ever, with boxes piled all over it. But this time he looked in the boxes and made a rather startling discovery.
They were empty. Every last one of them was completely empty. So was the closet.
Which meant, pure and simple, that Saralee had decided to clear out. It wasn’t enough that she had left him, but she had also made off with his car. And, undoubtedly, had also left him with the hotel bill unpaid. And no money except for the ten bucks and change he had in his wallet.
Or did he? He looked in the wallet and shuddered. The little bitch had gone through it and it was empty. Quite empty.
He was broke, and his car was gone, and the bill wasn’t paid, and he had to bring the car back to his father by nightfall, and he didn’t have a car to bring back, and he was broke, and he owed the damned hotel a fortune, and he had to get back to Lake Ludicrous, and...
First things first. First he had to get out of the hotel, and this time, of course, he couldn’t take his suitcase with him. If he did, they might stop him. And if they stopped him there were several things they would find out. They would learn that Saralee was gone, and that all Saralee’s luggage had somehow managed to accompany Saralee, and that the car was gone, and that he had been trying to get lost himself. They would also discover that he was neither James Blue nor a resident of Philadelphia, and at that point they would solve all his problems for him. They would chuck him in the tank, and they would lose the key, and that would be the end.
He left the suitcase, took the elevator to the main floor and headed for the door. He felt his hands trembling a little and hid them in his pockets.
Then he heard the voice, just behind him, saying: “Mister Blue? Could I talk to you for a minute?”
Seven
Vince was never quite sure how he did it. When he turned, slowly, in answer to that ominous question, and saw facing him a bald man wearing a pinstriped suit who could have been nothing in this world but a hotel manager, his blood sank to his shoes, his heart jumped up into his throat, and he went blank. And someone else, some total stranger, using his body and his voice, snapped with obvious irritation, “What is it?”
“About this bill, Mister Blue,” said the manager, holding up a squarish sheet of thin paper. “I hate to—”
“Bill?” snapped the person using Vince’s body and voice. “Bill? When my wife walks out on me, takes my car and goes God knows where, you come jabbering at me about a bill?”
The manager managed to back speedily away without moving a step. “Well,” he said, his face a symphony of sympathetic smiling, “well, I didn’t realize — of course, I had no intention—”
“You’ll get your money,” the genius in Vince’s body said contemptuously. “Let me worry about one thing at a time, will you?”
“Yes, of course,” said the manager. He was bowing from the waist now. “Of course.”
“I’ll straighten things out with you,” the genius in Vince said, “once I’ve found my goddam wife.”
“Certainly, sir,” said the manager. “Of course, sir.”
The genius who had control of Vince’s body glared with Vince’s eyes at the manager for a second longer, then spun Vince’s body on Vince’s heel and marched Vince the hell out of the lobby and out to the sidewalk. Then the genius went away to wherever he’d popped up from, and left Vince standing there, shaking like a leaf.
He’d gotten away with it. He’d gotten away with it! He’d gotten away with it!
Now, all he needed was a place to sit down for a while, until his knees could carry his weight again. Now, all he needed was a place to sit down and a strong black cup of coffee and a dime to pay for the coffee. And his father’s car back, so he could go home again. And Saralee standing in front of him, so he could beat her lovely face in.
It was so clear now, so goddam clear. She’d gotten up — it must have been seven o’clock or earlier, since the garage attendant said she took off with the car at eight — she’d gotten up, and she’d noticed Vince’s suitcase all packed and ready to go. And she had realized that Vince was on the verge of taking a fast powder. So she had decided that she would take that fast powder herself, before little Vince had the chance.
It was now just about noon. She had a four-hour start on him. She also had money, and he didn’t, not a dime. She also had a means of transportation, and he didn’t, not a pogo stick.
What Vince had been doing to her physically all week, she had just done to him figuratively. And she’d been a lot better at it than him. When she did it, she was thorough. There wasn’t any need for seconds.
Coffee. He needed coffee, and a place to sit down and try to think. That was the first thing. He couldn’t just stand here, on the sidewalk in front of the hotel, until that manager in there had a chance to think things over and decide maybe Mister James Blue ought to hang around the hotel awhile and wait for his erring wife where the manager could keep an eye on him.
As if in answer to his thoughts about coffee, a bum picked that minute to panhandle him. He was a short, scrawny, scrubby little bum, with a short, scrawny, scrubby little beard. He came staggering up, dressed like a picture on a CARE poster, with a pathetic expression on his rummy face and his filthy hand held out, palm up, and he whined, “You got a dime for a cup of coffee, Mister?”
Vince just looked at him. He opened his mouth, and closed it, and opened it again, and closed it again, and finally said, in a calm and reasonable voice, “If I had a dime for a cup of coffee, you stupid son-of-a-bitch, I would drink a cup of coffee.”
The bum blinked, and looked aggrieved. “Jeez,” he whined. “You don’t have to get that way about it.” And he went staggering off to panhandle somebody else.
Vince took off in the opposite direction. It was too dangerous to hang around in front of the hotel any longer.
He’d walked two blocks, trying to think about what to do about Saralee and the car but managing only to think about the fact that what he needed now was a cup of coffee and a place to sit down and think things out, when he suddenly had a brilliant idea.
He stepped into the next doorway he saw. He took off his tie and slipped it into his coat pocket. Then he turned his coat collar up, unbuttoned his white shirt halfway down and pulled one shirt tail out so it dangled down below the bottom of the suit coat. He rubbed his hands on the sidewalk until they were good and sooty, then rubbed them on his face until it was good and sooty. Then he stepped back out among the pedestrians and looked for a likely prospect.
One came along almost immediately. A youngish guy in his mid-twenties, walking arm in arm with his girl. Vince figured a guy with a girl would be afraid to look cheap in her eyes, and so would be an easy touch. He stepped in front of the couple, a pathetic expression on his face and his now-filthy hand extended palm upward, and whined, “You got a dime for a cup of coffee, Mister?”
The victim looked embarrassed. He stopped and fidgeted for a second, and mumbled something, while the girl with him looked curiously at Vince, and then he stuck his hand into his pocket and came out with a handful of change. “Here,” he mumbled, and dropped half a buck into Vince’s waiting palm. Then he hurried on by.
Not only a cup of coffee. A cup of coffee and a hamburger. With onions.
Sitting in the luncheonette, dawdling over his coffee and hamburger, Vince thought it out.
Saralee was gone. So was the car. They were together, Saralee and the car.