Somebody Else's Music(137)

Maybe it was true that in some places the world had gone on, but it had never gone on for Emma Kenyon Bligh, and she had never wanted it to. Even at fifteen, she had known it was all going to be downhill from there. She could see the future looming up at her like a tidal wave. The trick was not to have a future at all—and she had managed that, but she hadn’t realized, until now, that the strategy only worked if everybody around you was not having a future, too. Just let one of them step outside the circle and the game was up. The tidal wave had won. There was nothing left to look forward to. Except that that wasn’t right, either. There had never been anything to look forward to. That was the point.

She turned her head back to look at the nurse, who was talking on the phone. It seemed there was a phone in the room that could actually be used, if she’d had the strength to use it, or any interest in calling anybody. She waited until the nurse put the receiver down and then said, “Please?”

“What is it?” the nurse asked her, coming close. “I’ve already told you. You’ve got to relax. You’ve got to sleep.”

“Listen,” Emma said, smiling a little, and closing her eyes. “I want to be dead.”





3


In Bennis Hannaford’s car, Liz Toliver’s head seemed to be pounding out several beats at once, all from songs with titles that had the words “my life” in them somewhere. Bon Jovi. Billy Joel. Strong bass sessions. Lots of drums. It was true what she’d thought of back there during the day somewhere. This was the first generation in history in which every single person had a sound track for his life. They were all playing out their own particular screenplays to somebody else’s music. For some reason, when she’d first said that, it had bothered her. Now it seemed entirely natural. It even seemed profound. She felt just a little drunk, and definitely giddy. She had never felt so free of Hollman in all her life.

She pulled the car around the last of the banking curves that led out to the manufactured flatland where the entrance to the Interstate was and the hotels were, too, all four of them. As soon as she did, she saw the cluster of cars standing in front of the reception door at the Radisson. There were so many of them—and they were so out of place—that if they’d had flashing lights she would have assumed there was a fire. Or a murder, she thought, although she didn’t expect there to be another murder.

“Rats,” she said. Then, when Bennis turned her head, she nodded toward the Radisson ahead. “They’ve found out where we are. Really, they’ve found out where Jimmy is. They don’t care about me, unless I’ve just been charged in the murder of Chris Inglerod. Do you think that’s likely to have happened?”

“No,” Bennis said.

“I don’t either. Let’s just bull it out.”

If cell phones worked out here, Liz would have used hers to call up to Jimmy and warn him she was coming. Since they didn’t, she pulled the tangerine-orange Mercedes into the nearest parking space she could find and got out. She waited for Bennis and then tossed Bennis the keys. Bennis did something that made all the doors lock.

“You really think I could get my car painted a color I like better,” Liz said. “I could just take it back to the dealership and have them do that.”

“Probably. You could take it to a decent body shop, if you know one. They’d be faster and they’d be cheaper and they’d probably be just as good. What color do you want to paint your car?”

“Lemon-yellow.” Liz looked up and through the big plate-glass windows that made up the wall that led to reception. “You ever done one of these before?”

“Not where they were interested in me,” Bennis said. “And they’re still not interested in me, so that ought to be all right.”

“Unfortunately, they are interested in me and you’re with me. Let me tell you what we do. We just walk in there, fast, looking straight ahead, and we don’t say anything at all. Just keep moving. Get to the elevators. They won’t usually follow you into the elevator because they’re afraid of injunctions.”

“Injunctions?”

“Yeah. The hotels get injunctions on them. Some of the real bastards have dozens in every city they go to, but nobody’s going to have any here because I can almost guarantee that none of them have ever been in Hollman before. My God, what an awful place. Did I tell you that, that this is an awful place?”

“Several times, in the car.”

“Well, it’s true. And I don’t just mean because it’s small. Don’t let them feed you all that crap about the wholesome goodness of small-town America. Some of small-town America may be wholesomely good, but some of it is Hollman. Petty, spiteful, envious, small-minded, provincial, stultifying—”