Just After Sunset Read Free Page B

together.
    “See what I mean, jellybean?” And Palmer smiled as if he’d conjured those howls just to prove his point.
    David turned, his light jacket rippling around him in the keen breeze, and started down the steps. He went fast, before he could change his mind, and only the first step was really hard. After that he just thought about Willa.
    “David,” Palmer said, not joshing now, not joking around. “Don’t.”
    “Why not? She did. Besides, the wolves are over there.” He jerked a thumb back over his shoulder. “If that’s what they are.”
    “Course that’s what they are. And no, they probably won’t come at you—I doubt if they’re specially hungry this time of year. But there’s no need for both of you to spend another God-knows-how-long in the middle of nowhere just because she got to missing the bright lights.”
    “You don’t seem to understand—she’s my girl.”
    “I’m going to tell you a hard truth, my friend: If she really considered herself your girl, she wouldn’t have done what she did. You think?”
    At first David said nothing, because he wasn’t sure what he thought. Possibly because he often didn’t see what was right in front of his eyes. Willa had said so. Finally he turned back to look at Phil Palmer leaning in the doorway above him. “I think you don’t leave your fiancée stranded in the middle of nowhere. That’s what I think.”
    Palmer sighed. “I almost hope one of those trash-pine lobos does decide to put the bite on your city ass. It might smarten you up. Little Willa Stuart cares for nobody but herself, and everyone sees it but you.”
    “If I pass a Nite Owl store or a 7-Eleven, you want me to pick you up a pack of cigarettes?”
    “Why the fuck not?” Palmer said. Then, just as David was walking across NO PARKING TAXI ZONE painted on the empty curbless street: “David!”
    David turned back.
    “The shuttle won’t be back until tomorrow, and it’s three miles to town. Says so, right on the back wall of the information booth. That’s six miles, round-trip. On foot. Take you two hours, and that’s not counting the time it might take you to track her down.”
    David raised his hand to indicate he heard, but kept going. The wind was off the mountains, and cold, but he liked the way it rippled his clothes and combed back his hair. At first he watched for wolves, scanning one side of the road and then the other, but when he saw none, his thoughts returned to Willa. And really, his mind had been fixed on little else since the second or third time he had been with her.
    She’d gotten to missing the bright lights; Palmer was almost certainly right about that much, but David didn’t believe she cared for nobody but herself. The truth was she’d just gotten tired of waiting around with a bunch of sad old sacks moaning about how they were going to be late for this, that, and the other. The town over yonder probably didn’t amount to much, but in her mind it must have held some possibility for fun, and that had outweighed the possibility of Amtrak sending a special to pick them up while she was gone.
    And where, exactly, would she have gone looking for fun?
    He was sure there were no what you’d call nightclubs in Crowheart Springs, where the passenger station was just a long green shed with WYOMING and “THE EQUALITY STATE” painted on the side in red, white, and blue. No nightclubs, no discos, but there were undoubtedly bars, and he thought she’d settle for one of those. If she couldn’t go clubbin’, she’d go jukin’.
    Night came on and the stars unrolled across the sky from east to west like a rug with spangles in it. A half-moon rose between two peaks and sat there, casting a sickroom glow over this stretch of the highway and the open land on both sides of it. The wind whistled beneath the eaves of the station, but out here it made a strange open humming that was not quite a vibration. It made him think of Pammy Andreeson’s hopscotch chant.
    He