Michael’s Wife Read Free Page B

curtains were a grim beige and there was hardly enough room to walk between the bed and a desk.
    I’m alone. I’m safe. Now what do I do? I could call the police . Instead she turned on the TV that sat on the desk. There was a picture, but the volume dial brought no sound. A newscaster mouthed words from some notes in his hand, the clock behind him reading 12:05. And then a grisly picture of wounded soldiers on stretchers … the men, their clothes, the ground they lay on, everything in varying shades of dreary. She switched it off and lay back on the bed.
    Her mind was very clear. It didn’t seem empty but full of images. Images of Harley’s stubby blond hair and teasing eyes in a tanned face, of Raymond and his dirty apron, the truck with a dent running along its side, a vast desert with mountains in the distance. She would have looked but a speck from an airplane. She could see the pleasant park in Florence; even the deer Harley had spoken of seemed clear and real. But her own face was not clear, and anything that had happened before that morning was not there at all.
    In her mind the picture of the gray men on gray stretchers fought with the image of the black telephone that sat on the bedside table just before she fell asleep.
    She awakened more tired than before with her head aching again and an intense desire to soak forever in a hot tub. But there was no tub, only a shower stall with a curtain that wouldn’t quite reach across. She showered, letting the water get as hot as she could endure it, and worked on her hair until the little bar of Ivory disintegrated. Wrapping herself in one towel and her hair in another, she washed her clothes and hung them around the little room to dry.
    She must have slept most of the afternoon for it was growing dark when she stepped out of the bathroom. She pulled the curtains and switched on the lamp. In the large mirror over the desk she could see herself from the knees up, a very slender woman—girl? She couldn’t guess her age, somewhere between twenty and thirty? There was a mole on the side of her neck.
    She found it embarrassing to stare at this stranger so intimately, and frightening not to recognize her. Rewrapping the towel, she turned from the mirror with the same depressed feeling she’d had that morning watching her reflection in the whitewashed building in Florence. She could be in terrible trouble and not know it or running from something she wouldn’t recognize until it caught up with her.
    Then her eyes rested on the telephone. Why do I keep putting it off? There was a phone book in the drawer of the little bedside table and in it the number of Luke Air Force Base. Dialing quickly before she could change her mind, she half hoped the phone wouldn’t work. But the call went through.
    It took some time to locate Captain Devereaux and she considered hanging up. She didn’t know what she’d say. She really should rehearse something before she talked to him.…
    â€œHello.”
    â€œâ€¦ Captain Devereaux?”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œCaptain Devereaux … I need your help. I wonder if you know of anyone … anyone who is missing.…” Her heart was pounding blood past her ears so hard she could barely hear herself.
    â€œWho is this?”
    â€œWould … would it be possible to meet you somewhere?” She sounded silly to herself; what must she sound like to him?
    â€œWhat the.…” The voice was deep, resonant, impatient.
    â€œCaptain Devereaux, it’s urgent that I see you. I know it sounds strange, but … I was given your name and I … have to see you. Please, I won’t take much of your time.”
    The voice on the other end of the phone was silent.
    â€œCaptain Devereaux, are you there?”
    His answer came after a long pause and was barely audible, as if he were choked with astonishment or disbelief. “Laurel?”
    â€œDo you know me? Oh. thank God,