Empty Mile

CHAPTER 10

Stan asked me to drive him to work the next day. Bill Prentice was unlikely to be in and he wanted to be there to help out as much as he could. After I’d dropped him off I headed into Back Town to meet Marla. She worked in a modern-looking annex the council had built for its administrative staff a block away from the town hall itself. We went to a café called the Black Cat opposite her building. It was a basic place with plain tables and hard chairs and had been around long before gold town nostalgia became the obligatory decorative motif for eateries in Oakridge.

At breakfast and lunch the place was busy with workers from neighboring businesses but midmorning it was almost empty and Marla and I had our pick of the tables. We sat at the front of the place by one of the large plate-glass windows. Around us sunlight picked out dust motes in the air and the occasional chink of plates from back in the kitchen seemed somehow to point up the loneliness of this in-between time.

Marla looked efficient in her office clothes but under her lipstick and eyeliner she was pale and her eyes were tired.

We talked about Pat dying. When I told her it looked like an overdose of sleeping pills she tensed and began twisting a napkin between her hands.

“What sort of sleeping pills?”

“Halcion.”

“Oh Jesus…” For a moment she closed her eyes. “I gave them to her.”

“What?”

“I gave her the pills.”

“To kill herself?”

“No! For fucksake, Johnny. She couldn’t sleep, she wanted something. I was going to get her some grass, but when I asked Gareth all he had was pills.”

“Hang on, why are you asking Gareth anything?”

“He’s the only guy I know for that kind of thing.”

“So you’re what, in touch with him on a regular basis?”

“Jesus Christ! Didn’t you hear what I said? I’m telling you she got the pills off me, and all you’re worried about is if I’m seeing Gareth.”

“Are you?”

“Fuck.” Marla let out a breath and worked at not being angry. She reached across the table and took my hand.

“Why would I be seeing Gareth?”

She looked at me levelly until I gave in.

“Okay… Okay, I’m sorry. Were you close… with Pat?”

“She’d come around sometimes without Ray and we’d talk. I liked her but we weren’t girlfriends or anything.”

“Why didn’t she get her own pills?”

“Her doctor wouldn’t give them to her, I don’t know why.”

“Was she taking antidepressants?”

“Of course, she’d been on them for years.”

We finished our coffee and went outside and stood in the sunshine in front of the café while Marla smoked a cigarette.

“Do you think the thing with my father and Pat would have gone anywhere?”

Marla shook her head. “She would never have left Bill. He treated her like shit, fucked anything that moved, but she loved him. She had this dream that one day everything was going to come right between them. And Ray always seemed really uncomfortable with the whole affair thing.”

Marla rubbed the butt of her cigarette against the wall of the café and took a few steps along the sidewalk to a trash can. I watched her until movement a block away on the other side of the road caught my eye.

Bill Prentice, alone and wearing a dark suit, was running down the short flight of stone steps in front of the town hall toward us. From the expression on his face it looked like he was reprising the anger he’d exhibited toward me in his wife’s bedroom.

Marla stepped back from the trash can and stood close to me. Bill didn’t slow when he got to the sidewalk on our side and as I opened my mouth to make some sort of greeting he raised his fist and hit me hard enough on the side of the face to knock me down. I struggled to my feet as fast as I could, expecting further blows. But they didn’t come.

Bill stood before us, quivering, arms straight at his sides and rigid, his head turning in a narrow arc between Marla and me as though he couldn’t decide who to settle on. The tension in him was so great he seemed unable to speak and in those silent moments I saw a dreadful sadness replace his anger and I knew I was looking at a man for whom the world had become incomprehensible.

When he finally spoke his voice was strangled. “Why did you do it?”

“We just found her. We didn’t do anything.”

Bill looked around him as though he didn’t know where he was, then stared hard at me again and screamed, “I don’t understand!”

Marla moved forward a little. There was a tremor in her voice when she spoke. “Bill, you’ve had a terrible shock. You should be at home. Do you want me to take you?”

“You bitch! You fucking evil bitch! Do you know what you’ve done to me? What did I do to you? What did I do? I paid you. I didn’t touch you, I just watched. What did I do wrong?”

Marla looked uncertainly at me. I felt out of my depth. I didn’t understand his anger and I didn’t know how to help him.

“Bill, come on, man-”

“Fuck you! Fuck you!”

He broke down then, sobbing, clenching his fists in front of his chest. A couple of people on the sidewalk stopped to watch and one of the security guys from the town hall came over. He recognized Bill and stepped between us.

I felt Marla pulling me, dragging me away. It didn’t feel right to leave him like this, crying and so obviously broken, but she pulled harder and we walked away and left him there collapsed in the arms of the guard.

We went back to where I’d parked the pickup. We were both shaken and we locked the doors after we got in. Marla shuddered.

“He was talking about what we did at the lake.”

“Yeah.”

“Jesus Christ,” she groaned. I put my hand on her arm but she jerked away angrily.

“Don’t touch me!”

“He’s just feeling guilty. It’s not our fault if he feels bad about it now. We’re just someone he can take it out on.”

But Marla wasn’t listening. Without warning she twisted in her seat and slapped me across the face. The blow wasn’t hard but it caught me on the same side of the face as Bill’s punch and it stung.

“What the fuck!”

“Why did you have to leave me? Why the fuck couldn’t you have stayed? Look what you turned me into! Someone who can fuck in front of another man. I’m disgusting. We could have bought a house and had a kid. We would have been normal and clean. We would have been fucking happy.”

She put her face in her hands and fell against me and sobbed.

“Jesus, Johnny, Jesus…”

I held her and let her cry and stared blankly through the windshield. The town bustled about its business, people walked along the sidewalk, cars drove down the street, but I saw nothing through the glass except the cold shine of my own guilt. Later, when Marla had quieted, she went back to work and I drove fast along country roads for a long time with all the windows open and the air rushing in.