Liquid fear

CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

“Where are we going?” Wendy asked.

Her head was resting on his shoulder, and despite the chemical stink and the lingering factory smell, Roland liked it. She belonged there.

“Anywhere away from hell counts as heaven,” he said. He had to use little tricks to keep himself focused, jabbing at his wounds or biting his lip until it bled. He kept one hand on the wheel and the other curled in a fist.

Once, when the image of Briggs slobbering on Wendy’s naked thighs flashed, he’d wanted to pull over, drag her by her hair, and beat her brains out.

But he got over it.

That’s what you do when you love somebody. You get over it.

“You feeling okay, babe?” he said, kissing the top of her head.

“Better. But it all seems like a dream.”

“We’ve got a different dream now.”

“There at the last…in the cage…”

“Forget it.”

“Briggs wanted me to remember something-”

“Forget it.”

She snuggled closer, and she was warm. He was on I-40 and the midnight traffic was sparse, mostly truckers. He couldn’t help but wonder what might be stored away in the long trailers, hidden from view, and how many other potions might be getting shipped around the world.

“I’m glad you came back,” she said.

“Well, I didn’t have much choice.”

The gun was jammed in his waistband, and he liked the feeling of power there. It was new and strange, something like control. But he knew control was an illusion.

A memory flashed of digging through the wallet in Cincinnati and looking for photos of David’s family. He wasn’t sure if the memory was real or imagined, but it had been driven by some deeper impulse. Or maybe something beyond him, a god that might have knitted itself back into existence from the lost, gray vapor.

He remembered. That was good. He had a chance.

“We never really talked about having kids,” Roland said.

“We haven’t talked about a lot of things,” Wendy said.

“Maybe we ought to change that. The talking, I mean.”

She turned to him and her lips were close. “Remember that time in the park, when you picked those roses for me, and that park attendant came running over and yelling?”

He didn’t remember, but he laughed a little and said, “Yeah. That was something.”

“I still have those roses, pressed between the pages of the Manet book you gave me. You know I love my Manet.”

That was funny, because he’d bought her a book of Gaugin, but maybe one weird French painter was as good as another when it came to storing keepsakes.

He smiled. If he could remember a name like “Gaugin,” then maybe his brain wasn’t too full of holes. He’d piece it together eventually.

He turned his face to kiss her.

“You love Manet, and I love you,” he said. “Looks like we’re in for a hell of a ride.”

One day at a time, they said in his recovery program. But sometimes it was a second at a time, because fear only needed the blink of an eye. Everything else took longer.

He headed west, away from the sunrise and false hopes and bottled nightmares, and toward the endless road of memories that awaited them.