Ghost Story Read Free Page B

he began taking things off the shelves, anything. A jar of pickles, a box of apple turnovers, a canned ham, two or three other cans he didn't bother to look at. These he took to the counter.

    The fat man, Buddy, was staring at him suspiciously. "You just shook me up a little bit," he said to him. "I haven't had much sleep, I've been driving for a couple of days ..." Invention blessedly descended. "I have to take my little girl to her grandmother, she's in Tampa—" Angie swiveled around, clutching two jars of crunchy peanut butter, and gaped at him as he said this—"uh, Tampa, on account of her mother and me split up and I have to get a job, get things put together again, right, Angie?" The girl's mouth hung open.

    "Your name Angie?" the fat man asked her.

    She nodded.

    "This man your daddy?"

    He thought he would fall down.

    "Now he is," she said.

    The fat man laughed. " 'Now he is!' Just like a kid. Goddam, You figure out the brain of a kid, you got to be some kind of genius. All right, nervous, I guess I'll take your money." Still sitting on the counter, he rang up the purchases by bending to one side and punching the buttons of the register. "You better get some rest. You remind me of about a million guys I took into my old station."

    Outside, Wanderley said to her, "Thanks for saying that."

    "Saying what?": pertly, self-assuredly. Then again, almost mechanically, eerily, ticking her head from side to side: "Saying what? Saying what? Saying what?"
    5
    In Panama City he pulled into the Gulf Glimpse Motor Lodge, a series of shabby brick bungalows around a parking lot. The manager's lodge sat at the entrance, a separate square building like the others, with the exception of a large pane of plate glass behind which, in what must have been ovenlike heat, a stringy old man with gold-rimmed glasses and a mesh T-shirt was visible. He looked like Adolf Eichmann. The severe inflexible cast of the man's face made Wanderley remember what the ex-policeman had said about himself and the girl: he did not, with his blond hair and fair skin, look anything like the girl's father. He pulled up before the manager's lodge and left the car, his palms sweaty.
    But inside, when he said that he wanted a room for himself and his daughter, the old man merely glanced incuriously at the dark-haired child in the car, and said, "Ten-fifty a day. Sign the register. You want food, try the Eat-Mor down the road apiece. There's no cooking in the bungalows. You planning on staying more than one night, Mr.—" He swung the register toward him. "Boswell?"

    "Maybe as long as a week."

    "Then you'll pay the first two nights in advance."

    He counted out twenty-one dollars, and the manager gave him a key. "Number eleven, lucky eleven. Across the parking lot."

    The room had whitewashed walls and smelled of lavatory cleaner. He gave it a perfunctory look around: the same iron carpet, two small beds with clean but worn sheets, a television with a twelve-inch screen, two awful pictures of flowers. The room appeared to have more shadows in it than could be accounted for. The girl was inspecting the bed against the side wall. "What's Magic Fingers? I want to try it. Can I? Please?"

    "It probably won't work."

    "Can I? I want to try it. Please?"

    "All right. Lie down on it. I have to go out to do some things. Don't leave until I come back. I have to put a quarter in this slot, see? Like this? When I get back we can eat." The girl was lying on the bed, nodding with impatience, looking not at him but at the coin in his hand. "We'll eat when I get back. I'll try to get you some new clothes, too. You can't wear the same things all the time."

    "Put in the quarter!"

    He shrugged, pushed the quarter into the slot and immediately heard a humming noise. The child settled down onto the bed, her arms fully extended, her face tense. "Oh. It's nice."

    "I'll be back pretty soon," he said, and went back out into the harsh sunlight and for the first time smelled