Desperate Measures

2

The name had been appealing: Warm Welcome Motel. Pittman had found it among several other motels a half hour after he’d hurried, shivering, from the golf course area. Houses had been dark, streetlights widely separated. Whenever he saw headlights, he had darted toward the shelter of bushes or a backyard before he could be seen. He’d had a vague idea of which way the thruway was. Fear had spurred him.

Now, as he locked the motel door behind him, the last of his energy drained from him. He sank into a lumpy chair and sipped the cardboard cup of bitter but wonderfully hot coffee that he’d bought from a noisy machine at the end of the concrete-block hallway. The room’s carpet was green and worn. He didn’t care. The walls were an unappealing yellow. He didn’t care about that, either, or about the hollow beneath the dingy orange cover of the mattress on the bed. All he cared about was heat.

Need to get warm.

His teeth chattered.

Need a hot bath.

He turned the room’s thermostat to seventy-five, then stripped off his wet clothes. After arranging his trousers, shirt, and suit coat on hangers, he left the closet door open in hopes they would dry. He put his soaked shoes near the baseboard radiator, draped his socks and underwear over the back of a chair, and twisted the hot-water faucet on the bathtub.

For an instant, he was afraid that the water would be only tepid. Instead, it sent steam billowing around him. He leaned over the gushing tap, luxuriating in the heat. Only when the tub was nearly full did he add any cold water, just enough so he wouldn’t scald himself as he settled into the exquisitely hot bath. He slid down until the steaming water came up to his chin. The tub was so full that water trickled into the overflow drain. By shifting sideways, he managed to tuck his knees under so he was almost completely submerged.

He exhaled with pleasure and felt heat penetrate his skin, his muscles, his bones, dissipating the heavy chill that had gathered at his core. Gradually his arms and legs stopped quivering. He closed his eyes and realized that he hadn’t enjoyed a physical sensation so much since…

His mind balked but finally permitted the thought.

…since the night Jeremy had died. He had felt so guilty being alive while Jeremy was dead that he hadn’t been able to tolerate even the simplest, most basic of pleasures. The taste of a good meal had become repugnant-because Jeremy would never again be able to enjoy that sensation. The soothing feel of clean sheets, the freshness of a morning breeze, the comfort of sunlight streaming through a window: Any positive sensation was abhorrent-because Jeremy would never be able to share them.

And one of the sensations that had made Pittman feel especially guilty was the warmth of a shower. Jeremy had enjoyed spending what had seemed to Pittman (before Jeremy got sick) an undue amount of time in the shower. After Jeremy’s funeral, Pittman had suddenly discovered that he felt repelled by the thought of a shower. Since he needed to clean himself, he had moderated the problem by keeping the temperature of the water as neutral as he could manage. Just because he had to bathe didn’t mean that he had to enjoy it.

Now, for the first time since Jeremy’s death, Pittman was surprised to discover that he was allowing himself to experience a pleasurable sensation. He told himself that the sensation was necessary, that he absolutely needed to get warm. After all, he had once done a story about participants in a wilderness survival course, and one of the dangers that the instructors had kept emphasizing was that of becoming wet and chilled and dying from hypothermia. So, yes, he could grudgingly allow a positive sensation under this circumstance.

But the truth was, his enjoyment wasn’t just tolerated; he relished it. For the first time in longer than he cared to remember, he appreciated the feelings of his body.

But thoughts of Jeremy caused a black pall of gloom to sink over his mind again. He found it bleakly ironic that despite his eagerness to commit suicide, his escape from the estate had prompted him to endure such intense fear for his life.

You should have let them do you a favor and shoot you.

No. Pittman angrily echoed a thought from a few hours earlier. It has to be my idea, not theirs. When I go out, it’ll be my way, at a time and place of my own choosing. I’ve got my own deadline, eight days from now, and I damned well intend to stick to it. Not sooner.

His anger became melancholy as he remembered the reason that he hadn’t already killed himself. I promised Burt. For what Burt did for Jeremy.

Then melancholy became confusion as thoughts about Burt reminded Pittman of why he had followed the ambulance. He imagined the questions that Burt would demand answers for.

Why had Millgate been taken from the hospital? Why had he been driven to the estate in Scarsdale? Why had the guards at the estate not just pursued Pittman but instead tried to kill him?

As soon as Pittman was off the property, the risk the guards thought he posed would have been at an end. Pittman could understand them wanting to capture him and turn him over to the police. But to want to kill him? Something was very wrong.

After draining the tub and refilling it with more hot water, Pittman finally felt that the chill within him had been smothered. He pulled the plug and got out of the tub to towel himself vigorously. Again he caught himself enjoying a sensation and checked the impulse. After wrapping himself with a blanket, he turned off the lights and peered past the blind on the room’s window. It looked out onto the motel’s rain-puddled parking lot. He saw a car come in and worried that it might be the police, who, alerted by the guards at the estate, would be out looking for him.

But the car didn’t have any dome lights on its roof and it wasn’t marked. Pittman wondered then if the car might belong to the estate, that this might be some of the guards searching the area for him, talking to clerks at various motels. Only when he saw a woman get out of the car and enter a room on the other side of the parking lot did his tension ease.

The police. At the golf course, he hadn’t heard any sirens. Did that mean the police had not been alerted? he wondered. How would the guards have explained shooting at a prowler after the prowler had reached a public area?

And the guards, would they still be hunting him? They might check the local motels, sure. But wasn’t it more logical for them to assume that their quarry would want to get as far away as possible?

Besides, they don’t know who I am or what I look like.

Pittman’s knees buckled from fatigue. Shivering, he crawled into bed and gradually became warm again. He told himself that he would sleep for a couple of hours. Burt usually got to the newspaper around eight. Pittman would call, tell Burt what had happened, and get instructions.

I’d better tell the desk clerk to wake me around eight, Pittman thought. In the dark, he reached for the telephone. But his arm felt weighted down. He drifted.