Enchanted Isle Read Free Page A

he had—he was crabbing and crabbing and crabbing about what happened down at the desk. There, soon as he’d signed the card and asked for a double with bath, the woman said, “Second floor front. That’ll be eight dollars, please.” I was kind of surprised, as there was my luggage beside me, my zipper bag that I had, but paid with a ten-dollar bill, and when she gave me my change and key, I started upstairs. Rick followed along with the bag, but when we got to the room he burst out, “How does she get that way? Making us pay in advance? We look like bums or something?” I said it was more of the same, what he had mentioned before: “We’re kids and no one believes us, that we’d pay for our room or anything. Always, we get the short end of the stick.”
    For me that covered it, but he went on and on, taking the one chair that we had, while I sat on one of the beds, and he kept going on, even while we ate dinner, which we did around six o’clock, at a coffee pot up the street, an all-night joint that the woman directed us to. We both had the roast beef sandwich and buttermilk, and pie a la mode for dessert. And on the eight dollars, I would like to have given it a rest, but he kept on about it—so even the counterman threw me a wink—about the dirty tricks being played on him by everyone, especially by his father. He’d go into a long, mixed-up story that didn’t make any sense, like about the tires that had been hid in the family garage, then found there by the police, and then begin asking questions that didn’t have any answers: “Could I know that bunch would steal those tires, then stash them in our garage? Would he believe me, that I didn’t know they were there? Why would he pay for that loot? To save me, as he said? From having to go to Patuxent? Or to make me look like a bum?” Then, when I’d kind of lost track, he’d switch off to another mixed-up thing, about slinging sodas the previous summer. Then: “And that drugstore, reporting me on my cash to him, that I was short. Would he believe I wasn’t? Would he make them come up with their slips, so I could prove I was clean? Oh, no, he had to pay, for the same noble reason—to keep me from doing time.” And next, the bitterest squawk of all, was about some girl who lived next door to him and gave him $7.50 she had made selling Girl Scout cookies door-to-door to keep for her until Monday, so she wouldn’t spend it Saturday night. And: “When I gave it back to her, she said it was seven-teen-fifty, that I’d nicked her out of a tenspot that was part of the money. I hadn’t. I know what she gave me, don’t I? But would my father believe what I said? I give you one guess if he would. Once more he paid, but this time he said was the last—that’s when he put me out.” And that’s when I wanted to tell him, “Cool it, enough is enough.” But then I thought, “Wait a minute, Mandy! Who talked whose ear off today coming in on the bus? And who listened real nice? Took your side and did the best he knew how to help you out of your spot? He did, that’s who. So fix up your face and keep still. Maybe he does have a squawk. The lease you can do is listen.” So I did, saying, “Oh my, I can hardly believe it” and “That was really awful” and “Your father would do that to you?” All while we were finishing dinner I talked like that, and during the walk we took afterward. It seemed funny later, when I drove the getaway car after we held up the bank, that those places I had to know to do my part right I’d already noticed real close on the walk I took that night: the chopper-blade factory, a two-story concrete building with black marble framing the entrance and THE COLYPTE CORPORATION in brass letters over the door and a chopper blade over that; the branch bank of the Chesapeake Banking and Trust Company, a block and a half beyond the stoplight, on the cross-street in between; and the phone booth on the cross-street, a half block up