The Girls He Adored

45

The powder-blue Coupe de Ville scraped its exhaust pipe a few times on the high crown of the dirt logging trail as Maxwell drove back down the mountain, and the next stretch of narrow, twisting county roads definitely cramped Maybelline's style, but when she reached Interstate 5, she was in her element. She ate up the miles and crossed the forty-second parallel into Oregon shortly after seven P.M.

Not that Irene knew anything about parallels or borders- Maxwell had ordered her into the trunk just before they joined up with the interstate at Redding. He allowed her out to pee only once, at a gas station near Weed with sufficiently isolated restrooms. The rest of the time she lay in a darkness broken only by the intermittent white flashing of the brake lights, and later, after dark, by the hellish red glow of the taillights.

Oddly enough, Irene found herself almost welcoming the worst stretches of road, the steepest climbs and drops, the sharpest turns. At least the constant vigilance and sheer physical effort required in order to prevent herself from being tossed around the trunk like loose luggage helped keep her mind from dwelling obsessively on the horrors and indignities of the recent past or, even more terrifying, the foreseeable future.

After a few hours on the interstate, another forty-five minutes of gently winding highway, then one more bumpy stretch of nauseating serpentine loops, S curves, and switchbacks negotiated at minimal speed, Maybelline finally came to a full stop. Maxwell climbed out, leaving the motor running. Irene heard the sound of a gate creaking open, and understood with a sense of relief mingled with dread that the end of the journey was at hand.

But there was one last hill for Maybelline to climb, a hill so steep that Irene had to brace herself with both hands to avoid being slammed against the back of the trunk. Then the car stopped again, and the trunk lid opened. Maxwell stood over Irene, his face lit eerily from below by the taillights. He asked her if she were all right. She couldn't think of an answer-words would not come.

Max reached in and helped Irene out of the trunk. She was weak, sore, and queasy, but the fresh air was a revelation, delicious, intoxicating; greedily she filled her lungs, leaning against the car until she felt able to stand on her own.

When she tried to walk, though, Irene's legs gave way beneath her. Max put his arm around her and half carried her around to the front seat of the car, helped her in, then closed the door behind her. She stared dazedly through the windshield, saw Maybelline's headlights illuminating a mysterious looking tunnel fifteen feet high and twenty feet long, made of chain-link fencing overgrown with vines and briars, with locked gates at either end. On either side of this sally port, a high, electrified chain-link fence extended on into the darkness as far as she could see.

“Wait there,” called Max, stepping into the glare of the headlights. “And whatever you do, don't open your door or roll down your window.” Then he unlocked the gate and was immediately swarmed over by a pack of stocky, savage-looking black-and-brindle dogs. Irene shrieked and closed her eyes, certain that Maxwell was about to be torn to pieces.

When she opened her eyes again, Maxwell was on the ground and the dogs were worrying at him, nipping and darting and growling in their throats. Then she heard Max laughing at the bottom of the pile, and realized it was only play.

After roughhousing with the pack for a few minutes, Max shooed them back into the kennel, unlocked the inner gate, returned to the car, drove straight through the sally port, and relocked both gates behind him.

“In case you ever wanted to leave here in a hurry, this would be a real bad way to go out,” he informed Irene diplomatically as they started off again.

The blacktop forked on the other side of the fence. Maxwell took the left fork, a short spur that petered out at the edge of the woods, overlooking a vast expanse of meadow sloping downward toward a dark ravine.

“Oh my,” said Irene, when Max switched off the headlights. Beyond the meadow, across the ravine, a jagged, two-horned mountain peak broke the horizon. Above it was the most spectacular night sky Irene had ever seen, a dust storm of silver stars splashed against a backdrop of incomprehensible blackness. When her eyes focused on the blackness, the stars glittered and pulsed like a living sea. When she focused on the stars, the blackness seemed to drop away dizzyingly, leaving her teetering on the edge of the universe.

Maxwell turned off the engine, and he and Irene sat together for a few moments in a deep silence that was somehow enhanced rather than broken by the clicking of the cooling manifold, the scraping of the cicadas in the meadow. Then he started up the engine again, switched on the lights, threw Maybelline into reverse, backed her up slowly until they reached the fork in the road, and this time took the right fork, which wound north along the crest of the forested ridge.

“Here we are,” he announced, as the headlights picked out a long, narrow, three-story house at the edge of the forest.“Welcome to your new home, Irene.”

Home. The word chilled Irene something awful. What a permanent sound it had. How she wished he'd used some other word. House, room — anything but home.