The Passage Read Free Page B

bolt down the back, just like Elvis had. Mostly he just sat at his desk behind the counter, playing solitaire and smoking a little cigar with a plastic tip. Jeanette paid him in cash each week for the room and if shethrew in an extra fifty he didn’t bother her any. One day he asked her if she had anything for protection, if maybe she wanted to buy a gun from him. She said sure, how much, and he told her another hundred. He showed her a rusty-looking little revolver, a .22, and when she put it in her hand right there in the office it didn’t seem like much at all, let alone something that could shoot a person. But it was small enough to fit in the purse she carried out to the highway and she didn’t think it would be a bad thing to have around. —
Careful where you point that
, the manager said, and Jeanette said,
Okay, if you’re afraid of it, it must work. You sold yourself a gun
.
    And she was glad she had it. Just knowing it was in her purse made her realize she’d been afraid before and now wasn’t, or at least not so much. The gun was like a secret, the secret of who she was, like she was carrying the last bit of herself in her purse. The other Jeanette, the one who stood on the highway in her stretchy top and skirt, who cocked her hip and smiled and said,
What you want, baby? There something I can help you with tonight?
—that Jeanette was a made-up person, like a woman in a story she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the end of.
    The man who picked her up the night it happened wasn’t the one she would have thought. The bad ones you could usually tell right off, and sometimes she said no thanks and just kept walking. But this one looked nice, a college boy she guessed, or at least young enough to go to college, and nicely dressed, wearing crisp khaki pants and one of those shirts with the little man on the horse swinging the hammer. He looked like someone going on a date, which made her laugh to herself when she got into the car, a big Ford Expo with a rack on the top for a bike or something else.
    But then a funny thing happened. He wouldn’t drive to the motel. Some men wanted her to do them right there, in the car, not even bothering to pull over, but when she started in on this, thinking that was what he wanted, he pushed her gently away. He wanted to take her out, he said. She asked,
What do you mean, out?
    —
Someplace nice
, he explained.
Wouldn’t you rather go someplace nice? I’ll pay you more than whatever you usually get
.
    She thought about Amy sleeping back in the room and guessed it wouldn’t make much difference, one way or the other.
As long as it ain’t more than an hour
, she said.
Then you got to take me back
.
    But it was more than an hour, a lot more; by the time they got where they were going, Jeanette was afraid. He pulled up to a house with a big sign over the porch showing three shapes that looked almost like letters but not quite, and Jeanette knew what it was: a fraternity. Some place abunch of rich boys lived and got drunk on their daddy’s money, pretending to go to school to become doctors and lawyers.
    —
You’ll like my friends
, he said.
Come on, I want you to meet them
.
    —
I ain’t going in there
, she said.
You take me back now
.
    He paused, both hands on the wheel, and when she saw his face and what was in his eyes, the slow mad hunger, he suddenly didn’t look like such a nice boy anymore.
    —
That
, he said,
is not an option. I’d have to say that’s not on the menu just now
.
    —
The hell it ain’t
.
    She threw the door of the truck open and made to walk away, never mind she didn’t know where she was, but then he was out too, and he grabbed her by the arm. It was pretty clear now what was waiting inside the house, what he wanted, how everything was going to shape up. It was her fault for not understanding this before—long before, maybe as far back as the Box on the day Bill Reynolds had come in. She realized the boy was afraid, too—that somebody