In Milton Lumky Territory Page 15

  It’s even possible, he thought, that the next car that drives in here to the Grand View Motel will be his gray Mercedes.

  The evening air was warm. He left the screen door open as he took a shower in the cubicle-like bathroom.

  It occurred to him that he might benefit by knowing the exact location of the dairy. So, when he had finished his shower and had put on his dressy single-breasted suit, he set out in the car to search for it. The motel owner gave him complete instructions, and he found the dairy within a few minutes. Naturally everyone had gone home. A row of trucks were parked in the rear, by a metal loading dock. The empty trucks depressed him, and he drove back into town. What a hell of a thing to drive a thousand miles for, he thought to himself. But in the daytime it would be more pleasant.

  Having nothing else to do he cruised up and down the highway on both sides of Pocatello, keeping his eye out for the Mercedes. At each motel he slowed down for a good long inspection of the cars parked between the cabins or in the space before the numbered doors. He saw every make of car and every variety of motel, but no sign of the Mercedes. For hours he kept it up, driving back and forth, slowing at each motel or wherever he saw cars parked. Later in the evening the traffic began to thin, and by two o’clock he had street after street of the town to himself. But he continued to drive; he did not feel much like it, but on the other hand he did not care to shut himself up in his motel room and go to sleep. At three o’clock he became too halting in his reactions to continue. Without having had any success he drove back to his own motel, parked, went inside, and prepared for bed.

  The next morning he drove over to the dairy.

  In the sunlight the place struck him as much more cheerful, although he saw almost as little sign of life. Evidently the milk had been brought in at dawn, bottled and taken off to be delivered; the trucks that he had seen lined up were nowhere in sight. The office of the dairy was a small building at one end of the bottling and pasteurizing plant, and he opened the door and entered.

  Behind a varnished oak desk sat a kindly-looking woman of a country sort, wearing a flowered dress. She asked him what she could do for him, and he explained to her that he wanted to see Mr. Lumky when he came in.

  “He should be in any time now,” the woman said. She showed him a chair in which he could sit, and some Saturday Evening Posts to read. But he preferred to stand by a window overlooking the company’s parking lot; he watched for the Mercedes, as he had been doing now since entering Milton Lumky territory. It had become an obsession, an end in itself - not Lumky but the Mercedes was the sight he held out for.

  Some time later the receptionist approached him and said, “Excuse me, but Mr. Lumky called and said he isn’t going to be able to keep his appointment with Mr. Ennis.”

  He regarded her stupidly.

  “He said he’s ill,” she said.

  “When will he be in, then?” he said.

  “He told Mr. Ennis that he’d get in touch with him very shortly.”

  “Is he here in town?”

  “Oh yes,” she said. “He’s staying somewhere here.”

  “Did you find out where?”

  “No,” she said. “He said he would get in touch with us.”

  He left his name and the phone number at his motel, and walked out of the building.

  Now he had no idea what to do. He did what he had been doing; he drove around Pocatello, up one street and along the next, searching for the Mercedes. There was nothing to think about. He had driven this far; he certainly couldn’t leave. So he drove around and around, and at sunset he had still seen no sign of the Mercedes, either in motion or parked.

  At six-thirty he ate dinner in a restaurant. Then he stopped off at his motel to see if Lumky had called. Lumky had not called. So again he resumed his driving.

  If Lumky was sick, what was the nature of his sickness? How sick was he? Had he had an accident on the road? Or was it nothing more than an excuse to get out of his appointment at the dairy? Suppose, he thought, that Lumky had not gotten to Pocatello at all; suppose he had stopped off in some other town and phoned from there. He might not get to Pocatello at all this time. It might not be until his next round that he showed up at the dairy, in a matter of weeks.

  But he kept on driving.

  The traffic around him remained heavy until nine or ten o’clock and then, as it had done the night before, it began to thin. By one in the morning he saw only an occasional car.

  At two o’clock in the morning he saw the Mercedes.

  AHEAD OF HIM, at a stoplight, the Mercedes coasted through on the yellow. He had to stop and watch it as it continued on. When the light changed he followed after it, memorizing the pattern of its tail lights. The license plate could not be read; he could not get close enough to it. Maybe it’s another Mercedes, he thought to himself. At night all cars, except bright pastel ones or very dark ones, look gray. He stuck with it, getting closer and closer, and at last he came up beside it. On the door of the car he saw the painted inscription:

  WHALEN PAPER PRODUCTS

  SERVE THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

  So it was Lumky. He began tapping his horn. The street being dark he could not see Lumky; he had no way of knowing if Lumky recognized him. The Mercedes kept on. He kept on with it, sometimes in front, sometimes beside it. Toward the end of town it began to pick up speed. So he did so, too.

  At a stop sign he managed to stop in front of it. Setting the parking brake he jumped out and ran back to the Mercedes. It had started to back away, wanting to pull around his Merc.

  “Hey,” he said, banging on the door. The Mercedes continued to back, and then the driver shifted gear and moved forward, swinging out toward him so that he had to leap from its path. He managed to catch hold of the door handle and get it open.

  Inside the car, behind the wheel, was a girl, wide-eyed and frightened. She wore a billowy skirt, and her hair was arranged in long curls, very blond hair, so that she reminded him of a carefully brushed and groomed grammar school child scrubbed until she shone. At a guess she was no more than sixteen or seventeen.

  “I’m looking for Milt,” he said, hanging onto the door handle as the car drifted forward.

  “What?” she said, in a faint squeak.

  “Stop your damn car,” he said. “I know this is Milt’s car. Why is he sick?”

  The girl put her foot on the brake; she had on laceless slippers. “Milt Lumky?” she said, in her clear, high-pitched soprano.

  “I drove all the way up from Reno to talk to him,” he said, panting and nearly incoherent.

  Staring at him, she said, “Let me get my breath.”

  “Pull over off the road,” he said. Other cars had begun honking at them. He ran back to the Merc, hopped in, and drove to the curb. The Mercedes wobbled over behind him and also stopped. This time he came around on the passenger’s side; he rattled the door handle and she unlocked the door for him. Now she did not seem as scared, but her pale, fragile features were certainly those of a child; he could not believe she was supposed to be driving the car, or any car. Her feet scarcely reached the pedals. In fact, she was propped up on a pillow. He saw, now, that she had a ribbon tied in the midst of her blond curls. The front of her dress was cut low, but she had no figure at all. It was a child’s dress and a child’s body.

  “Are you a friend of Milt’s?” she asked, in her little voice.

  “Yes,” he said. “I tried to get hold of him at the dairy.”

  “He couldn’t keep his appointment,” she said. “I was driving around trying to find a grocery store still open, or some place I could buy a can of frozen orange juice for him.”

  “Where is he?” he said.

  The girl said, “He’s staying at my apartment. We’ve been living together.”

  That explained why he had not seen the Mercedes parked at any of the Motels. “I noticed a grocery store still open,” he said. He had gone down so many streets that he had seen every part of Pocatello. “I’ll show you where
it is, if you want to follow.”

  Shortly, they had parked in front of a dinky, family-owned grocery store that still had its lights and sign on.

  “What’s your name?” the girl said, as they entered the store. When he had told her she said, “He never mentioned you.”

  “He didn’t know I was coming,” he said.

  While the owner of the store rang up the purchase he got the girl to give him the address. Now, even if they became separated, he could still find Milt. He became elated. What did he have to worry about? One chance in a million … after two days of driving around town. Because Milt wanted frozen orange juice.

  Ordinarily he would not have expected such a long shot to work out, but here in Milt Lumky territory it seemed perfectly natural. Now that it had happened it failed to astonish him.

  Standing beside him in the grocery store, the girl asked him what he wanted to see Milt about. In her slippers, without heels, she came up to the second button of his coat. He guessed that she was not over five foot one. Now, in better light, he saw that her skin was dry and rougher than a child’s, and her hands, when she reached out for the bag of groceries, had nothing in common with a child’s hands. Her fingers were knobby and the knuckles were rubbed red. Her nails, painted once but now chipped and irregular, had apparently been gnawed short. The palms of her hands had deep grooves in them. Her arms were unusually muscular; she wore a sleeveless blouse, and he saw, on her arm, a white vaccination scar that undoubtedly was years old. On one finger she had a gold band, what appeared to be a wedding ring.

  He answered that he had business he wanted to discuss with Milt. The girl nodded, evidently accepting that as natural. He asked what her name was, and she told him that she was Cathy Hermes and that she was married. Her husband, Jack, lived somewhere in Pocatello but not with her; they had separated a year or so ago. She had met Milt at the place she worked, an office in the Pocatello City Hall; she was a clerk-typist, and Milt had dropped by selling paper supplies to the city. For months now they had been living together, exactly as if they were married.

  “How long has Milt been in Pocatello?” he asked her, as they walked back to their cars.

  She answered that Milt had been in town almost a week; he had not gotten past Pocatello, but had come down sick on his way east to Montpelier and gone no farther.

  “What’s the matter with him?” he asked. He held the door of the Mercedes open for her.

  She replied that neither of them knew; or, if he knew, he didn’t let on. It was a chronic condition that got inflamed now and then. In a few minutes he could see for himself; her apartment was not far off.

  Getting into his Merc he followed the tail lights of the Mercedes until at last she turned off into a driveway on a residential street and parked in a wooden doorless garage. He parked behind her, in the driveway itself. Cathy approached him carrying the bag of groceries.

  “It’s upstairs,” she said. “We can go up the back way.” She led him up an outside flight of wooden steps, past washing hanging on lines and piles of newspapers and bottles and flower pots, past several doors and at last to the top floor. Balancing the grocery bag she brought out a key and unlocked the door; he and she passed on inside a hallway that smelled of soap.

  When she turned on a light he discovered that he was in an old, old building that still had brass plumbing fixtures and artificial candles set in the walls and the ornate egg-shaped doorknobs that he remembered from his childhood. The walls were painted yellow. The hall was quite narrow, but after that he found himself in a large front room with a high ceiling; here, the chandelier had been taken down and electric wiring ran from the ceiling to the floor, where someone had fixed up a socket for the lamp and radio.

  “Milt,” the girl said, disappearing into another room. Returning, she said to Bruce, “Just a minute.” She carried the grocery bag back into the kitchen while he waited. The room seemed cold, and he saw her strike a kitchen match and light the oven of the black ancient stove.

  “Milt,” she repeated, going past him once more, into the other room. “There’s a man here who drove up from Reno to talk to you.” The door swung shut after her and he could neither hear nor see. He waited.

  Through the closed door he heard stirrings and a man’s mutterings. Then the girl’s voice. They seemed to be arguing. At last the sound quieted down and he heard nothing.

  The door opened and she came out and shut it after her. “Do you mind not seeing him for a while?” she asked.

  “Okay,” he said, struggling with his impatience.

  The girl entered the kitchen and began fixing the orange juice.

  “What are his symptoms?” he asked her.

  “He has a constant fever,” she said. “And no strength, and he’s swollen up around the eyes. And he has trouble urinating.”

  “It sounds like a kidney infection,” he said.

  “Yes,” she said, mixing the orange juice in a quart mayonnaise jar. “He has some pills he takes. It come and goes. It’s not as bad as it was yesterday.”

  “Did you tell him my name?” he asked.

  The girl said, “He’s too dopey right now.”

  “You mean he didn’t know who it was?”

  “He feels so out of sorts that he doesn’t like to see anybody until he feels better.” She would not say whether Lumky had remembered him. “I know he’ll want to talk to you later on when he feels improved.”

  He told her that he could only stay in Pocatello so long.

  “Maybe tomorrow,” she said. “He’ll probably feel more like himself when he wakes up in the morning. Right now he hardly knows what he’s saying. If you want to talk to him about business you better wait.”

  A disturbance from the other room caused her to put down the jar of orange juice and go out of the kitchen. He heard her and Milt talking, and then her moving about from one room to another. Water ran in a bowl; something was filled, carried; then more talking.

  When the girl returned he said. “I’ll drop by tomorrow morning, then.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. “Here, I’ll let you out the front door. Now that he’s awake.” She led him through the apartment and into the room in which Milt lay on the couch wrapped up in blankets, his head on a white pillow. Passing by him, he saw that it was Milt Lumky beyond any doubt. The man’s eyes were shut and he breathed noisily. His arms had a dark unhealthy color and so did his face. The room smelled of illness. On the floor around the couch were glasses and pans and medicines.

  Holding the front door open for him, the girl let him out onto a hallway. “Good night,” she said, and shut the door almost at once behind him.

  Anyhow he had seen him; he knew for certain that it was Milt.

  He returned to his motel.

  11

  WHEN HE RETURNED to her apartment the following morning he found the door locked and a note tacked to it.

  Dear Sir:

  Mr. Lumky felt better today and he went to the dairy to see them. I am at work. Will be home at five-thirty.

  Cordially yours,

  Mrs. Cathy Hermes

  He tried the knob. What did this remind him of? It reminded him of the night he had gone back to Peg Googer’s for his coat, found the house locked up and deserted, and had gone in through a window and discovered Susan lying in the bedroom smoking a cigarette. But how different this was … he wandered around to the back of the dilapidated three-story building and climbed the stairs; the back door was locked, too, and so was the single window overlooking the porch. Mrs. Hermes was too careful.

  The Mercedes, of course, had gone; the garage was empty. One of them had driven off in it, most likely Milt. He wondered if Milt would come back here, or having finished his business with the dairy, would speed on to the next town to make up for lost time.

  Unable to think of anything else he could do he parked his car directly before the building and, sitting behind the wheel, waited.

  An hour or so later a jolt that made the whole car jump fo
rward startled him into panicky wakefulness. The Mercedes had glided up behind him and banged bumpers; hopping out he found himself facing Milt Lumky, who grinned at him from behind the wheel of the Mercedes.

  “Hello, McFoop,” Milt said, leaning out the window. He shut off the car’s motor and stepped out carrying his leather satchel and several packets of samples. “Think sharp, be sharp,” he said. He looked the same as always; there was no sign of illness. In his jaunty bow tie, pink shirt, and sporty suit he passed by Bruce and up the steps of the building. “Come on,” he said over his shoulder.

  “I’m sure glad to see you,” Bruce said. “I was afraid maybe you’d gone on to the next town.”

  Upstairs, on the top floor, Milt read the note tacked to the door and then tore it down and stuffed it into his coat pocket. As he unlocked the door he said, “What do you think of Cathy?”

  “Very solicitous,” he said.

  “I have to pack,” Milt said, holding the door aside for him. “I’m two days late on my route.”

  While Bruce stood by, he carried shirts from a dresser to his suitcase. In the bathroom he gathered up his shaving objects.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t talk to you last night,” Milt said, as he stuffed pairs of shoe’s into the sidepockets of the suitcase.

  “That’s okay,” he said. “Can you talk about it now?”

  “What about?” Milt said.

  He said, “I’m interested in the Jap typewriters. The Mithrias. I saw one in San Francisco.”

  “That’s right,” Milt said. “You can pick them up out there on the Coast. How’s Susan?”

  “Fine,” he said.

  “Did you kick out Zoe?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Now we’ve got some working capital.” For some reason he felt reluctant to tell Milt about his marriage with Susan. “What can you tell me about getting a buy on some Mithrias?” he said. “You talked about it when I saw you before.”