CHAPTER 19


THE Motel Thirty in Lee had no objection to Pearl. They also would have had no objection to the Creature From the Black Lagoon-or Madonna. We sat in a room with pink wallpaper on beds that had pink chenille bedspreads. Each of the beds would vibrate for five minutes if you put two quarters in a slot.

Pearl circled the room carefully, went into the bathroom, drank noisily from the toilet bowl, came back out, selected one of the beds, hopped up, turned around three times, and lay down on it. Paul started calling.

It took three hours to call everyone on the list. No one had anyone namedRich Beaumont or Patty Giacomin registered. After the last call, Paul hung up the phone very carefully, and got up and walked to the window and looked out at the blacktop parking lot. He was perfectly still. His shoulders were hunched in angular pain, and for a moment I saw the fifteen-year-old kid I'd originally met, deadened with defeat, paralyzed with desperation.

"We'll find her," I said.

Paul nodded, and continued to stare down at the parking lot.

Pearl was quiet on the bed. Her head resting on her forepaws, her eyes on me, moving as I moved. She always watched me.

"When I was small," Paul said, "and my father was at work, and there was just me and her in the house, I remember I used to scheme to get her atten tion, not just to be nice, but to be responsible. I wanted her to be a mother. I'd be in my room and I'd spill something and I'd think, `Okay, now she'll have to come in here and do something."'

"Like an adult," I said.

Paul's back still had a quality of asymmetric tension to it as he spoke.

"Yeah."

"An adult could be trusted," I said.

"Yeah."

"An adult wouldn't leave you."

Without turning, Paul nodded. He put his hands in his pants pockets and leaned his forehead against the windowpane.

"Like she has again," I said.

The light outside the window was getting gray, and I could hear the wind picking up. Pearl looked uneasy, and her eyes followed me in even small movements.

"I been shrunk so much my skin's about to pucker," Paul said. "I know what's happening to me. I know why I feel like I do, and now I need tocome to terms with it. But it still hurts just as if I didn't understand it."

"And when we find her?" I said.

The reminiscent shrug again.

"Getting past that takes more than understanding," I said.

"Yeah?" Paul said. "How about heavy drugs?"

"Always an option," I said.

A few drops of rain splattered heavily against the window. Pearl's ears went up and she stared at the window, then glanced quickly toward me. I put my hand on her shoulder and left it there. Outside it had gotten quite dark.

"You mean will, don't you?" Paul said.

"Yeah."

"You mean self-control."

"Yeah."

Paul turned slowly away from the window and looked at me seriously. His hands were still in his pockets. Behind him the fat raindrops were spat tering more often against the glass, and the wind was rattling the window and skittering leaves across the blacktop in the parking lot among the economy cars and trucks with hunting caps on them.

"Heavy drugs would be easier," he said.

"I know," I said.

Outside, the storm came with a rush, driven by wind and slashed by lightning. It chattered against the window, and when the thunder followed,

Pearl sat bolt upright and leaned against me and swallowed hard.

We were quiet inside the cheap motel room listening to the storm in the gathering darkness.

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