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  "Jesus Christ, sometimes I feel like I married a guy with tits!" he had told her during a particularly vicious argument over household priorities; and nothing he had ever said, nothing anyone had ever said, had stung her so deeply. It was crude, it was malicious, and, she was afraid, it was just a little bit true. Though he had never explicitly called her a dyke, she knew that was what he was thinking.

  They were soon divorced, and Laura threw herself into her work. She accepted a few offers of dates but drew back at any suggestion of the bedroom, and, after a while, received no more offers. She had no desire for sex with any of the men she dated. Sex with Hank had turned from pleasant but unexciting to annoying and tiresome, and by the end of the marriage he had been using it as a weapon, a prod to punish her with rather than as an instrument of love. Since the only man she had ever known physically had never been tender, it followed, illogically but irrefutably, no man ever could be.

  It was only in the company of women, energetic women like Trudy and athletic women like Kitty, that Laura felt at ease and happy. And there were times, when she stood next to Kitty in the shower room of the tennis club, both of them surrendering to the steamy lassitude their exertions had caused, their bodies nearly touching, that she was curious enough to wonder what it would be like to hold her and kiss her and feel her body, hot and wet and slick, against her own. The curiosity would grow in her until she had to avert her eyes and turn away.

  She had never spoken of these feelings to Kitty or to anyone, and Kitty had never indicated that she held such feelings toward Laura. They were friends, and that was how they were viewed by the world and by themselves, at least openly; and there would be no raised eyebrows if the two of them went on a cross-country jaunt for four weeks.

  Kitty accepted the offer as soon as Laura made it, and then went shopping, buying enough outdoor gear to outfit a scout troop, including a large and expensive two-person tent, two sleeping bags that, Laura noticed, could be zipped together, and a trousseau of outdoor clothes from Banana Republic so complete in function and color line that Laura laughed. "Jesus, Kitty, we're going to be gone four weeks, not four years!"

  "Suppose we meet Paul Bunyan? Suppose we meet Robert Redford? I mean, I wanta look at least as good as Meryl Streep did."

  "That was in Africa, Kitty."

  "Yeah, but Redford really lives in Utah."

  Between the two of them, there was so much equipment to pack in the Cressida that Laura had a luggage rack put on top of the trunk to carry the tent and sleeping bags. Several days before they left, Laura decided to bring along a handgun. They were, after all, two women alone and would be going through some desolate parts of the country. So she took from her gun cabinet a .38 caliber revolver, put five cartridges into it, set the hammer on the empty chamber, holstered it, and put it deep under the front seat of the Cressida.

  They started out in mid August, driving across the Plains states as quickly as possible, stopping at a campground every night and getting up early every morning. They ate at restaurants until they reached Colorado, since they were unwilling to put up with the hassle of cooking on the Coleman stove and washing dishes until they reached a place where they could settle for a few days at a stretch and see the sights.

  They spent two days at the Black Canyon of the Gunnison, then drove down into Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, up through Utah to visit Bryce and Zion National Parks, then north into Wyoming and the Grand Tetons. They loved Yellowstone and spent a few extra days there, then headed east across the state toward the Black Hills. Three weeks had gone by, and they were on the homeward trail. Not once had either of them made any approach toward the other, aside from sisterly hugs and girlish, excited squeezes on Kitty's part.

  This hesitation to touch, to come too close, was conscious on Laura's part. She had decided that she would not be the one to initiate anything, although she did not know what she would do if Kitty were the instigator. They had had a fine time together. Most of the sights were new to Laura, and although Kitty had seen them on a trip with her parents when she was in the ninth grade, her memory of them was dim, so it was as if they were both seeing the wonders for the first time.

  On the night before they left one site to go to the next, they made it a point to have dinner and drinks at a local watering hole and get pleasantly sloshed. These mild bacchanals had been largely fun, except for an incident in Egnar, Colorado, where a couple of cowboys—or morons dressed as cowboys, as Kitty later put it—put the moves on them a little too strongly for comfort. Laura had finally tossed down cash on the table, and they left without finishing their dessert. The cowboys followed them to the parking lot, where they sat on the Cressida's hood, one on each side, as Laura started the engine.

  "Come on, now, honey," said the taller of the pair. "You girls don't wanta run off now without gettin' yourself some lovin' western style, do you?"

  "We do it like they don't do it back there in—where'd you say—Pennsylvania?" the other added. "You ain't had nothin' till you had a Colorado dick."

  "Get off the car," Laura said, trying to keep her voice from shaking, afraid that they would mistake her anger for fear.

  "What can I get on then?" said the tall one, not moving.

  Laura reached under the seat, pulled open the snap on the holster, and drew out the .38. "You can get on this," she said, sticking her arm out the window and pointing the weapon at the man.

  He tried to smile, but it was a poor attempt. "Now, listen, don't get so excited—"

  "I'm not, but you damn well better be. Now get off the car. And that goes for your needle-dicked friend too." They both hopped off, looking uncomfortable. "Where's your car, cowboys?"

  The two men glanced quickly at each other, and the tall one nodded toward the end of the small lot.

  "Let's go. Lead the way." The men walked toward the vehicle they had indicated, a light blue Chevy pickup with an open cab. Laura turned the Cressida around and followed them, her revolver trained on the tall man. "Now unlock it," she said when they reached it.

  "It's already unlocked," the tall man growled.

  "Stick the key in and turn it," Laura told him. "I want to make sure it's yours. And don't go reaching for the rifle you've got on the rack either."

  The man pulled a fat leather case full of keys from his pocket and inserted one into the passenger door, then flicked it back and forth.

  "Okay. Now use the key to let the air out of the two tires on this side."

  "What!—"

  "I wouldn't put it past you bastards to follow us. Now do it. Try anything funny, and this gun goes off in self-defense. I'm sure you bozos have a reputation in this town, so you think they'd believe you or a couple of innocent women on vacation?"

  The tall man hesitated for a moment and looked at his friend, who seemed to have gone into a state of mouth-breathing shock. "Goddam," the man muttered, then knelt, pulled off the valve cap, and pressed a key against the stem. The loud hissing sounded like a hymn to Laura, and she smiled at Kitty, who, she was surprised to see, was sitting there with the biggest, most shit-eating grin that Laura had ever seen her wear.

  "Okay," Laura said when both tires were flat, "now crawl under the truck."

  "Crawl under the truck?" the tall man protested.

  "That or lose your Colorado dick."

  The tall man nodded grimly. "All right, all right. But you bitches are gonna get yours. You don't treat people like this, people who are just havin' a little fun. . . ."

  "Under the truck, fun boy."

  The men crawled under, and Laura gunned the engine of the Cressida, tearing down the road in the direction of the campground. "I suggest we break camp tonight," she said to a hysterically laughing Kitty.

  "Oh, god," Kitty said between her sobs and hoots, "needle dick! Oh god!'

  In the campground, they literally tore the tent pegs out of the ground and threw the tent and equipment, unfolded, uncased, and unrolled, into the backseat, and sped north on 141.

  "
Hell bent for leather!" Kitty cackled. "Calamity Jane and Annie Oakley fleeing from the posse—the pussy posse!" She roared out a laugh, then, as her giggles slowly died away, she said, "I didn't know you had a gun."

  Laura shrugged. "I hoped you wouldn't have to know."

  "I'm glad you did."

  "It was dumb," Laura said. "They wouldn't have done anything. But now they're really pissed off."

  "You don't know. They might have. Done something, that is." She was quiet for a moment, and they watched the Colorado night through the windshield. "You don't know what people will do," Kitty said softly, and Laura thought later, in retrospect, that Kitty had said the only logical thing that could be said about Gilbert Rodman.

  They had no more problems until Saddle Junction. Most places were friendly, and, if Kitty did occasionally talk with men they ran into in the bars and restaurants, the men seemed perceptive enough to recognize that there was no seriousness in her, that she was not so much a cockteaser as a flirt, and that she was doing it as much for her friend's benefit as for any fun of her own. The only one who didn't see it was Laura. When she finally learned the truth, it was too late.

  They were both tired by the time they reached Saddle Junction at seven o'clock that night. They had stayed longer at Yellowstone than they had intended, and their hopes of making the campground at Gillette were out of the question. Though Saddle Junction had no campground, they stopped at the police station, a small, blocky building at the end of the single street, and asked if there was any place they could pitch a tent for the night. The chief—and sole officer, Laura decided—said that anywhere on the grasslands just outside of town would be all right and that there was a real nice patch down near a stream that backpackers used a lot. He told them how to get there, and when they asked about a place to eat suggested Ted's Big Horn Bar and Grill. Nothing fancy, he said, but good food and full drinks.

  They decided to eat first and drove down the street to Ted's, a plain, brick-fronted building with a neon-wreathed window on either side of the glass door. Inside, a bar ran down the right wall, and on the left were the rest rooms. Farther back, tables were in the center of the room, the kitchen on the right, booths to the left. Laura and Kitty sat in a booth and looked overhead at the trophy heads hung on the wall.

  "Jesus," Kitty said, nodding at the yellow-furred mountain goat hanging directly over their table. "I hope he doesn't drool on our sandwiches."

  The place wasn't crowded, and Laura wondered why the waitress looked so hassled as she took their order for sandwiches, fries, and light beers. There were three men at the bar, two together, and one alone at the end, drinking a beer and wearing a Walkman. An older man and woman were in the next booth, and three men in their fifties sat at one of the tables, talking quietly. Laura couldn't see a cook through the open window into the kitchen, and found out why when she saw the waitress throwing frozen fries into a deep-fryer and slapping their sandwiches together. .

  "Busy night here at Ted's," she said to Kitty, who grinned and nodded.

  The waitress brought their beers and told them breathlessly that their food would soon be ready. "Marlene din't show up tonight," she added, scurrying away.

  "That damn Marlene," Kitty said.

  "Life's a bitch." Laura raised her beer glass. "To Wyoming."

  Kitty shook her head. "To South Dakota, babe. We've been to Wyoming."

  The man sitting alone at the bar turned his head in their direction. Laura noticed that he had removed his headphones and they were now hanging around his neck. He looked at her quizzically, then smiled, stood, and walked toward their booth.

  "Heading toward Dakota?" he said.

  "That's right." Kitty gave him a big smile, and Laura could see why. He was darling, as Kitty would have said—about six feet, a hundred and eighty pounds, but trim in the waist. He had dark curly hair, olive skin, large wet eyes, and a smile that split his clean-shaven face into two equally handsome parts. He was wearing a denim shirt, jeans, and a pair of artfully scuffed Reeboks. He looked, Laura thought, like Hollywood's conception of an Indian detective.

  "Me too. Hey, may I join you?" He looked back at the bar with dismay. "The locals aren't too friendly."

  "Sure," Kitty said, and slid over so that he could sit beside her.

  "Great! Let me grab my beer."

  When he went back to the bar, Laura gave Kitty the eye. "Kitty . . ."

  "Oh, Laura, he's sweet."

  The man came back and sat down across from Laura. His breath smelled of beer and mint. "My name's Gil."

  "Gill like a fish?" Kitty said.

  "Gil like in Gilbert," he said.

  "Gil like in Gilbert what?" Laura asked. She liked to know people's names.

  "Gilbert Rodman," the man answered, and grinned. "And you two are . . . ?"

  "Laura Stark."

  "Kitty Soames. So you're not from around here?"

  "I look like a local?"

  "You look . . . western," Kitty said.

  "You were going to say Indian." Gilbert's face lost its smile for a moment. So Kitty had noticed too, Laura thought.

  "No, no I wasn't—"

  The smile returned as quickly as it had vanished. "It's okay. My mother was part Indian. But not from around here. I'm seeing the sights, just like you. I always wanted to do it, and now I have the time. I've got a bike."

  "God," Kitty said, "how can you stand these hills?"

  "Not a bike bike—a motorcycle. Lightweight sleeping bag and a change of socks, that's about it."

  "That big thing parked outside?" Laura asked, and Gilbert nodded. Laura had noticed it when they'd parked their car. It was massive, loaded with pannier cases and fronted with a giant console that looked like it held an entire recording studio. "That's quite a monster."

  "Nah, it just looks big because of all the stuff I've got on it—a real junk wagon. All the comforts of home."

  "And where's home?" Kitty asked him.

  "Wherever I hang my earphones."

  "Come on," Laura said. "Everybody's from someplace."

  "And maybe somebody's from everyplace." Gilbert grinned. It was a thin grin that didn't show off much of his teeth. Kitty seemed to like it. Laura didn't. "And where are you two from?"

  "Pennsylvania," Kitty said. "Lancaster."

  "Heard of it. Never been there."

  The food came then, and Gilbert remarked that he was feeling hungry too, and ordered a burger and fries, earning a withering look from the harried waitress. "Marlene didn't show up," Kitty told Gilbert when the waitress had gone into the kitchen.

  "Who's Marlene? A friend of yours?"

  "The cook."

  They talked about Yellowstone, where Gilbert said he had been about the same time as Kitty and Laura. "It's too bad we didn't meet there," Gilbert said. "We could've had a ball."

  Had a ball. Laura thought that sounded strange. She hadn't heard anyone say that in years, and when they had, they were over fifty. Gilbert didn't appear to be out of his twenties.

  "Those bears are something, though," Gilbert was saying. "You feed any?"

  Kitty shook her head. "I wanted to, but Miss Crabby here wouldn't let me."

  "They're not pets," Laura said. "A lot of people get mauled by bears every year."

  "That's because they're not careful," Kitty said.

  "You can be careful and still get mauled."

  "You're too cautious, Laura," Gilbert said.

  "You can't be too cautious around a thing with claws and a mouthful of sharp teeth."

  Gilbert cocked his head and looked at her. "You may be right," he said. "Yeah, you may just be right."

  Kitty changed the subject. "What have you got on your Walkman?"

  "Jazz. I really like jazz. Got a deck on my bike, bunch of tapes in my cases, play it all the time."

  "You must really like it if you play it in here too," Laura said.

  "Well, you know, you come in these western bars, they got this country shit on the jukeboxes all the time,
the Judds, and Waylon and Willie, all that shit."

  "Outlaw music," Laura said.

  "Outlaw," Gilbert repeated. "Outlaw, hell. Guys wouldn't know an outlaw one bit 'em in the ass."

  "And you would?" Kitty said.

  He looked at Kitty, Laura thought, like a cat about to gobble down a sweet and crunchy bird. "I might," he said softly.

  The waitress brought Gilbert's burger and fries and tossed the plate on the table in front of him so that it twirled for a moment like a dropped coin, settling with a final clatter. By the time it stopped, she was back in the kitchen.

  "What do you do, Gil?" Laura asked as Gilbert soaked his fries with ketchup.

  "What do I do? Or who am I?"

  Laura smiled thinly. "Sorry. There's often a difference, isn't there?"

  "Not always." He licked ketchup from his finger. "Not in my case."

  Now what the hell, Laura wondered, was that supposed to mean? Gilbert made her uncomfortable, not only because of what he said but also because of the way he looked at Kitty. There was no doubt that Kitty was a pretty girl, and men had looked at her before when Laura had been with her, but never in the way that Gilbert Rodman was doing now. It wasn't even with lust, which would have annoyed Laura but not frightened her the way she was frightened now. There was something else there, something that Kitty seemed unaware of, for she was smiling at the man, giggling, even stealing his french fries.

  "I wouldn't do that if I were you," Gilbert said with a touch of comic menace. Laura wondered how much truth was in it.

  "Oh yeah?" Kitty said. "Why not?"

  "Because of what I did to the last woman to steal my french fries."

  "And what was that?"

  "I killed her," Gilbert Rodman said quietly, holding up his fork and pressing his thumb onto the tines. "I stabbed her in the neck with a fork and buried her in the woods."

  Laura felt a chill go through her, but she was unable to take her eyes off the fork. Kitty was silent for a long, uncomfortable moment, then forced a laugh. "Oh, is that all?"