Call If You Need Me Read Free Page B

way, that’s all. No disgrace attached to that. Give me a sip of that, will you? He reached over for the glass of orange drink she was holding and took some. You know, I forgot to collect the rent from him tonight. I’ll have to get it in the morning, if he’s up. And I should have asked him how long he intends to stay. Damn, what’s wrong with me? I don’t want to turn this place into a hotel.
    You couldn’t think of everything. Besides, we’re new at this. We never rented a room out before.
    Bonnie decided she was going to write about the man in the notebook she was filling up. She closed her eyes and thought about what she was going to write.
This tall, stooped—but handsome!—curly headed stranger with sad eyes walked into our house one fateful night in August
. She leaned into Sol’s left arm and tried to write some more. Sol squeezed her shoulder, which brought her back to the present. She opened her eyes and closed them, but shecouldn’t think of anything else to write about him at the moment. Time will tell, she thought. She was glad he was here.
    This show’s for the birds, Sol said. Let’s go to bed. We have to get up in the morning.
    In bed, Sol loved her up and she took him and held him and loved him back, but all the time she was doing it she was thinking about the big, curly headed man in the back room. What if he suddenly opened the bedroom door and looked in on them?
    Sol, she said, is this bedroom door locked?
    What? Be still, Sol said. Then he finished and rolled off, but he kept his little arm on her breast. She lay on her back and thought for a minute, then she patted his fingers, let air out through her mouth, and went off to sleep thinking about blasting caps, which is what had gone off in Sol’s hand when he was a teenager, severing nerves and causing his arm and fingers to wither.
    Bonnie began to snore. Sol took her arm and shook it until she turned over on her side, away from him.
    In a minute, he got up and put on his underwear. He went into the living room. He didn’t turn on the light. He didn’t need a light. The moon was out, and he didn’t want a light. He went from the living room into the kitchen. He made sure the back door was locked, and then he stood for a while outside the bathroom door listening, but he couldn’t hear anything out of the ordinary. The faucet dripped—it needed a washer, but then, it had always dripped. He went back through the house and closed and locked their bedroom door. He checked the clock and made sure the stem was pulled. He got into bed and moved right up against Bonnie. He put his leg over her leg, and in that way he finally went to sleep.
    These three people slept and dreamed, while outside the house the moon grew large, and seemed to move across the sky until it was out over the ocean and growing smaller and paler. In his dream, someone is offering Myers a glass of Scotch, but just as he is about to take it, reluctantly, he wakes up in a sweat, his heart racing.
    Sol dreams that he is changing a tire on a truck and that he has the use of both of his arms.
    Bonnie dreams she is taking two—no, three—children to the park. She even has names for the children. She named them just before the trip to the park. Millicent, Dionne, and Randy. Randy keeps wanting to pull away from her and go his own way.
    Soon, the sun breaks over the horizon and birds begin calling to each other. The Little Quilcene River rushes down through the valley, shoots under the highway bridge, rushes another hundred yards over sand and sharp rocks, and pours into the ocean. An eagle flies down from the valley and over the bridge and begins to pass up and down the beach. A dog barks.
    At this minute, Sol’s alarm goes off.
    Myers stayed in his room that morning until he heard them leave. Then he went out and made instant coffee. He looked in the fridge and saw that one of the shelves had been cleared for him. A little sign was Scotch-taped to it: MR. MYERS SHELF.
    Later,