The Edge of Sleep

Chapter 8

They had a sign burned into a chunk of maple on the counter in the motel office announcing them as “The Lamperts,” as if they were a pair of Siamese twins, not just an aging married couple, as if they were a team yoked to a common cause-but in fact only Reggie thought of herself as an indissoluble part of a unit. George considered himself a free agent, always had, intended to continue to until they carted him away. No matter that he had been married to her for forty years and had never yet strayed in any significantly threatening way. He still might, he had it in him. He might decide tomorrow to just chuck it all, including his nagging wife and this burden of a business that was supposed to have been their retirement heaven, and hike on out to Utah or somewhere with a lot of sky and plenty of women to treat him with respect. He just might do that little thing, because, no matter how bad Reggie looked these days, he wasn’t that old yet.

Reggie knew that George harbored these defiant little notions and she had purchased the “Lamperts” sign just to remind him that he was about as much a free agent as the back half of the jackass. The sign was on the counter to serve as a daily reminder-so she wouldn’t have to.

Like the back half of the jackass, however, George did need to swish his tail now and then, and Reggie was too smart by far to try to deny him that. She took his flirtations in stride, regarding them as old habits that no longer had much meaning but were too comforting for him to discard. He looked about as much like a lover as the WWI vet saluting the flag on Memorial Day looked like a warrior. George was not capable of saluting anything these days-and who would know better than she, who had tried, God knows, every trick she could think of to get some lead into his pencil. So she let him have his flirtations with the guests, confident that he had as much at stake in seeing to it they never took him up on it as she did. The humiliation would make him unbearable, and he was tough enough to get along with as it was. If she had believed in sainthood and all that Roman claptrap. Reggie would have figured someone should put her name on the Pope’s waiting list just for having tolerated George Lampert for all these years.

He was flirting now, the damned old fool. She watched him from the office window as he patrolled the motel “cabins,” supposedly checking to see that they all had fresh towels. He knew damned well they had fresh towels because Reggie had seen to it herself that very morning. It was just his flimsy excuse to talk to the woman in number six again. He didn’t show any concern for the guests’ towel situation earlier, she noticed. Only when he saw the woman’s car bring her back from work. Then he was all of a sudden concerned about the linens.

The woman came out of the cabin as soon as he approached, closing the door behind her. Reggie could see her lift her head in laughter, hear the sound of it ringing across the grounds. She must have said something funny, Reggie thought. She certainly couldn’t be responding to George, who hadn’t said anything original in a couple decades at least. Reggie could tell what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth, and, often as not, she could tell she didn’t want to hear it. Which was one of the reasons they spent so much time in silence nowadays.

There was nothing silent about the woman in number six, however. She was one of the talkiest women Reggie had ever seen. And so good natured that Reggie sometimes had the urge to ask her what world she was living in. She was a pretty thing, if you liked that type with the shortish dirty blonde hair. More brown than blonde, of course, but Reggie, whose own hair was a faded pink, did not hold the use of artifice against anyone. A girl did what she had to do. Still, the woman actually seemed like fun and if she weren’t a guest, Reggie might have liked her.

She never allowed herself to really like any of the guests because she didn’t trust them. They always wanted something more-more blankets, more towels, more channels on the TV. As if they had pulled off Route 78 and into the Ritz, not the Restawhile. And they treated the cabins as if they were kept clean by an army of Puerto Rican maids, not just Reggie herself. And George, of course, when he felt like catering to the fancies of pretty guests.

Look at him now, leaning against the post supporting the phony porch roof, arms folded in front of him so the towels flopped down like some sort of high-waisted breech cloth. As if he had anything to cover up. Leaning and smiling and chatting away like a teenager. She wished a gust of wind would come along and blow those carefully arranged remaining hairs atop his head into disarray. He was so vain about those silly, forlorn-looking white scraps that he composed so meticulously each morning. As if they hid any of his shiny scalp. As if they fooled anyone but him. Reggie was forgiving about cosmetic deception for women because that was how that particular game was played and you played the cards you were dealt, but in men it seemed nothing more than the last crow of the dying rooster. She wished she had a video camera so she could tape him and then make him watch himself acting like a foolish old man for the benefit of this young woman. No fool like an old fool, and none bigger than George Lampert.

Now he was returning to the office. Reggie busied herself behind the counter. She could have made it into the next room and settled herself in front of the television before he reached the office if she had wanted him to think she hadn’t been watching. By staying behind the counter she could keep him in doubt. Maybe she’d watched him, maybe she hadn’t. A little uncertainty would help keep him in line. The trick was to not let him think he was getting away with anything so he got cocky, but not to make him think he was spied upon so he got rebellious, either. Being a good wife required a precise understanding of nuance.

“She’s a pisser,” he said approvingly as he entered, letting the screen door slam behind him as usual. She had told him a thousand times. Just as he had promised to fix it several hundred.

“Oh?” Reggie did not bother to look up.

“Got more juice running through her veins than a dozen women. You know who she reminds me of? That girl on television, the spunky one who’s always getting herself into trouble, then getting out again. You know the one I mean; she’s on that show you like.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know her name, she’s on that show you like. What do you call it.”

“Who are you talking about?” Reggie asked, trying to conceal her annoyance. Just like him, to come in trying to cloud the issue with his very first breath, bringing in irrelevant people, television stars. Unless he was comparing her to a star now. She wasn’t that pretty. Or that young, either.

“Dee,” he said. “Full of piss and vinegar, she is.” He chuckled as if just thinking of all that piss and vinegar made him happy all over again.

“Dee? Dee? What’s-a Dee?”

“The woman in six,” he said, pretending he didn’t notice the acid creeping not very subtly into her tone. “We just had a chat.”

“Oh, is that right?”

As if you weren’t watching every second of it, he thought. As if you didn’t act like I was going to whip into one of the cabins and boff a guest every time I stepped outside the door. Well, this guest I wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t mind at all. I’m not so certain she’d mind, either. She was cute and bright and friendly and had a way of talking to a man as if she’d known him for years, as if she knew him so well she knew what he was thinking all the time-and didn’t disapprove of it, either.

“She seems like a nice person,” he said. “And she’s going to save us some work.”

“Oh?” Reggie liked the “us.” As if he did any work that anyone could notice.

“We don’t have to clean her room. She’ll take care of the linens herself, so I told her to just let me know when she wanted towels or anything.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Her husband’s got a problem with his eyes. Opto, opto something or other, I didn’t get the name. He can’t take the light. It’s all tied up with migraines and such. She doesn’t want him disturbed. So she said she’ll do the cleaning herself. We don’t need to bother.”

“He’s sick?”

“Not sick. It’s a condition, he’s got a condition. It’s not contagious or anything. It’s just a temporary thing, it will clear up. You know how it is.”

“I haven’t got any idea how it is. She didn’t say anything about a condition when she checked in.”

“You’re not going to catch it,” he said, beginning to wish he hadn’t brought it up, not so soon after he had been seen talking to Dee, anyway. Reggie was bound to think it was some kind of trick. As if he were being manipulated and duped in some way. She was the most distrusting woman he had ever seen. He should have left her when he had the chance, before they’d sunk all their savings in this motel, while he was still young… Not that he wasn’t still young enough. He might take a hike to Utah at any moment. And maybe he’d take Dee with him. She must be getting pretty weary of being saddled with a husband with a condition. Not that you could tell it by talking to her. Not a whisper of complaint. Unlike some women he knew.

“In other words, we’re supposed to keep out,” Reggie said.

“She’s entitled to privacy, for Christ’s sake! The man has got a condition, he needs to be left alone. What do you care? It’s one less cabin to worry about.”

“It’s one cabin to worry more about, if you ask me. What’s she up to?”

“Maybe she keeps him naked and tied to the bed with the sheets. That’s why she doesn’t want you to change them, because he’d get loose and ravage all the women in the neighborhood.”

Instead of dignifying his statement with a response, Reggie pulled aside the curtain and studied cabin six. The curtains were drawn, the door closed. It might as well have been empty for all the signs of life it revealed. Number six was the farthest from the office of any of the cabins, and Reggie remembered now that the woman, “Dee,” had requested it especially. At the time she had said she thought it was the cutest, and in truth it did have rather better shrubbery in front than the others. The angle of its alignment had kept the sun at its back and consequently it had weathered less than the others… Now, however, Reggie wondered if it wasn’t simply that it was the farthest away from scrutiny. “I told her it was fine with us,” George said.

Reggie looked at him. He was puffing out his chest, preparing for a battle. Just like a rooster. All strut and puff and bluster. “Oh, you did, did you?”

“I sure did.” He lifted his hand, waving currency in her face. “She’s paying two weeks in advance. In cash. I figure that entities her to as much privacy as she wants.”

Reggie took the money from his hand, counted it, and made an entry into the books. As if money had anything to do with it, she thought. It was all about control, and she knew that “Dee” knew it, too, even if George was too charmed to realize it. Money had nothing to do with it.

He was still spoiling for a fight. Nothing he’d like better, Reggie saw, than to tangle with her in defense of another woman. A rooster with his comb engorged and flaming. Well, she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction.

“Well, that’s fine, then,” she said, closing the books as if that put a period to the discussion. As if some woman could keep her out of the cabins she owned and cared for and depended on her livelihood from just because she was full of piss and vinegar.

George was left with his fists balled for a fight and no one to swing at. She watched him with amusement as he tried to adjust. His relief almost outweighed his surprise.

“That show you like is coming on,” he said, glancing into their living room. “Come on and watch.”

Strutting out of the office, as if he were personally responsible for bringing her show onto the television. Little banty-legged bald-headed rooster, thinking he’d cowed the world with his crow. Well, hens laid eggs with or without a rooster. Everyone knew that-except maybe the roosters.

Ash lay on the backseat of the car, hidden under the blanket. The blanket was coarse and cheap, stolen long ago from some motel or other, and it had been used for a dozen purposes over the years, every one of which Ash could smell when the itchy cloth covered his face and nose. There was the odor of grease and oil upon the blanket, the smell of the spare tire against which the blanket was usually stored in the trunk of the car, the scent of grass, and even of Dee herself, who had often been wrapped in the blanket while she lay inert and mournful during her bad times. Ash could catch whiffs of himself, not only now but from the other times he had hidden under here, waiting for Dee to give the signal to come out.

And he could smell the boys. Their young bodies, their fresh skins. Their fear.

On one of the nature shows Ash had seen a wolf spider that built itself a den, complete with a camouflaged opening. When the spider’s prey approached too closely to the mouth of the den, the spider popped out and grabbed it, sucking it back into the lair in an instant. Ash had watched the show with fascination, wondering how the spider knew how to do what it did, how it knew that something edible would ever come by, how it knew the method to construct its elaborate web and den. He knew that he could never do anything that intricate himself.

“It just does it by instinct,” Dee had said. “It doesn’t know what it’s doing.”

But that was no explanation for Ash. He would not have known what he was doing, either, and he was certain he had no instinct to guide him through anything so elaborate.

And why was it called a wolf spider? Ash had seen wolves on other shows and they didn’t act at all like the spider. They hunted in packs and ran for miles and miles to catch their prey and only lived in holes when they had babies. There were always so many puzzles on the animal shows. Dee seemed to understand them all, even when she was attending only peripherally, dropping her comments in passing as she paced the room, but her explanations never helped Ash.

“They call it a wolf spider because of all that hair. It looks like fur,” she had explained. “Didn’t you hear him say that? I heard it and I wasn’t even listening.”

Ash hadn’t heard because he was so busy watching, but even if he had he would not have understood. Rabbits had fur, too. So did mice. Why didn’t they call it a rabbit spider? He loved to watch the shows, anyway.

Now, as he lay under the blanket in the back of the car, he thought of the wolf spider. Was this what it felt like as it waited for something to walk by close enough to grab? Was it a little bit scared, as Ash was? And excited, but sad, too, about what it would have to do? Did it get nervous?

Ash wanted to go to the bathroom, it seemed to be taking Dee so long. It always seemed to take her too long, but she said that was just because he was anxious. He knew he didn’t dare to leave the car to find a toilet. He didn’t even dare to sit up and look to see if Dee was coming.

“That’s all we need,” Dee had told him. “You lifting up from the backseat like a periscope. That wouldn’t look funny, would it?”

He knew she didn’t mean funny to laugh at, although Ash thought the vision of himself as a periscope was very comical.

There was to be no going to the bathroom, no peeking above the seat, no moving at all just in case someone happened to wander by and glance into the car.

Ash told himself he was the wolf spider. It wasn’t twitching around in its den while it waited. He had seen it. It stood like a statue, all its legs bent and ready to spring, its huge eyes peering straight ahead. The camera must have been right on top of it, but it didn’t twitch a muscle, not a hair on its body moved. If it had to go to the bathroom, it just didn’t, that’s all.

He heard footsteps approaching and opened his hands under the blanket to be ready to grab. His fingers were just like all of those spider’s legs, he thought, taut and poised.

He heard the door open, felt the weight of a body on the seat. Ash sprang like the wolf spider, engulfing the boy immediately, covering his body with the blanket as he shed it from himself. Ash’s arms locked around the boy’s body and his hand clamped over the boy’s face, pressing the cloth onto his mouth.

The car was already in motion but Ash stayed below the windows, knowing he was not to be seen by anyone until they were safely away. He lay atop the boy, pinning him to the floor with the weight of his body but careful not to crush him.

After the first moment of attack Ash adjusted his hand, making sure it covered only the boy’s mouth and not his nose, too. That was the only time when they really struggled, when he was inadvertently smothering them. Otherwise they lay very still. Ash thought of the insects captured by the wolf spider. They hardly seemed to struggle at all as the spider wrapped them in silk. He thought of the inflated frog being swallowed by the snake, only its enormous eyes registering protest.

Ash understood that the spider turned its victim into a mummy with the silk, not only immobilizing it but preserving it for consumption at a later time. In a way that was what he was doing with the blanket. He wasn’t just preventing the boy from struggling. He was wrapping him up for storage.

Not that they were going to eat him, exactly. Ash thought. But Dee would drain the juices from him, in time. She would leave him dry and hollow.

“Don’t you hurt my beautiful boy,” Dee said. She sounded excited, merry, almost, as if it were Christmas and the package Ash held in his arms was the best one of all and just for her. And it was for her, of course. For her and Ash, too, but mostly for her.

The car was gathering speed, which meant they were away from the town center and heading toward the highway. Soon, with the roar and speed of the thruway to mask all sounds. Ash would be able to get up and unwrap the package. It wouldn’t matter if the boy yelled then; no one would hear him above the noise of traffic.

Then they would drive and drive; it didn’t matter where as long as it was on the thruway. They would drive the twenty miles to home and past it, just keep going, then turn and come back the other way, killing time until it was dark and safe to return to the motel under cover of darkness. Ash would wrap the boy in the blanket once more and rush him into the privacy of their room in a matter of seconds, too quick for anyone to see, too fast for the boy to scream or kick his way free.

In the meantime Dee would explain to the boy what his duties and responsibilities were and what she expected of him. He wouldn’t understand at first; they never did. He would complain and tell them to take him home. If he was very foolish, or very frightened, he would threaten to call the police. Dee would forgive him today. She always forgave everything at first. She was so happy about her new present that she didn’t care if it had little imperfections. It was only with time that the imperfections would become apparent to her, and then they would seem to grow and grow until that was all she could see. The image of her beautiful boy would fade and she would see only ingratitude and disappointment.

But that would be a few weeks from now. In the meantime. Dee was his beautiful eagle again, soaring so gracefully above him. And the boy was her unfledged chick, confined by necessity and the surrounding dangers of hunters and lofty heights to the nest where she would care for him. And when she flew away to find food for her new hatchling. Ash would keep it company in the nest, like a big flightless bird himself, no more able to leave the aerie than was the boy, but stronger, protective. Even instructive. Ash could teach the young bird things it must know to please its mother. He could never teach it quite enough, it seemed, for eventually it would fail to please. No matter how hard Ash tried, no matter how manfully the boy attempted to win her approval, ultimately he would fail.

And then the bits of flesh that the mother eagle carried back to the nest to feed her chick would change. They would turn into pieces torn from the chick itself. She would feed the chick itself to eat. And the young bird, so carefully schooled by then in gratitude and submission, would dine upon itself without complaint until it was all gone.