"Stop it," Fran said. "Harold, won't you try not to be so awful?"
"Awful? " Harold shouted. "I'm trying to watch out for you-us-and that's so bloodydamn awful? "
"Look," Stu said, and brushed his sleeve up. On the inside of his elbow were several healing needle marks and the last remains of a discolored bruise. "They injected me with all kinds of stuff."
"Maybe you're a junkie," Harold said.
Stu rolled his sleeve back down without replying. It was the girl, of course. He had gotten used to the idea of owning her. Well, some girls could be owned and some could not. This one looked like the later type. She was tall and pretty and very fresh-looking. Her dark eyes and hair accentuated a look that could be taken for dewy helplessness. It would be easy to miss that faint line (the I-want line, Stu's mother had called it) between her eyebrows that became so pronounced when she was put out, the swift capability of her hands, even the forthright way she tossed her hair from her forehead.
"So now what do we do?" she asked, ignoring Harold's last contribution to the discussion entirely.
"Go on anyway," Harold said, and when she looked over at him with that line furrowing her brow, he added hastily: "Well, we have to go somewhere. Sure, he's probably telling the truth, but we could double-check. Then decide what's next."
Fran glanced at Stu with an I-don't-want-to-hurt-your-feelings-but kind of expression. Stu shrugged.
"Okay?" Harold pressed.
"I suppose it doesn't matter," Frannie said. She picked up a gone-to-seed dandelion and blew away the fluff.
"You didn't see anyone at all back the way you came?" Stu asked.
"There was a dog that seemed to be all right. No people."
"I saw a dog, too." He told them about Bateman and Kojak. When he had finished he said, "I was going toward the coast, but you saying there aren't any people back that way kind of takes the wind out of my sails."
"Sorry," Harold said, sounding anything but. He stood up. "Ready, Fran?"
She looked at Stu, hesitated, then stood up. "Back to the wonderful diet machine. Thank you for telling us what you know, Mr. Redman, even if the news wasn't so hot."
"Just a second," Stu said, also standing up. He hesitated, wondering again if they were right. The girl was, but the boy surely was seventeen and afflicted with a bad case of the I-hate-most-everybodies. But were there enough people left to pick and choose? Stu thought not.
"I guess we're both looking for people," he said. "I'd like to tag along with you, if you'd have me."
"No," Harold said instantly.
Fran looked from Harold to Stu, troubled. "Maybe we-"
"You never mind. I say no."
"Don't I get a vote?"
"What's the matter with you? Can't you see he only wants one thing? Christ, Fran!"
"Three's better than two if there's trouble," Stu said, "and I know it's better than one."
"No," Harold repeated. His hand dropped to the butt of his gun.
"Yes," Fran said. "We'd be glad to have you, Mr. Redman."
Harold rounded on her, his face angry and hurt. Stu tightened for just a moment, thinking that perhaps he was going to strike her, and then relaxed again. "That's the way you feel, is it? You were just waiting for some excuse to get rid of me, I get it." He was so angry that tears had sprung to his eyes, and that made him angrier still. "If that's the way you want it, okay. You go on with him. I'm done with you." He stamped off toward where the Hondas were parked.
Frannie looked at Stu with stricken eyes, then turned toward Harold.
"Just a minute," Stu said. "Stay here, please."
"Don't hurt him," Fran said. "Please."
Stu trotted toward Harold, who was astride his Honda and trying to start it up. In his anger he had twisted the throttle all the way over and it was a good thing for him it was flooded, Stu thought; if it actually started up with that much throttle, it would rear back on its rear wheel like a unicycle and pile old Harold into the first tree and land on top of him.
"You stay away!" Harold screamed angrily at him, and his hand fell onto the butt of the gun again. Stu put his hand on top of Harold's, as if they were playing slapjack. He put his other hand on Harold's arm. Harold's eyes were very wide, and Stu believed he was only an inch or so from becoming dangerous. He wasn't just jealous of the girl, that had been a bad oversimplification on his part. His personal dignity was wrapped up in it, and his new image of himself as the girl's protector. God knew what kind of a fuckup he had been before all of this, with his wad of belly and his pointy-toed boots and his stuck-up way of talking. But underneath the new image was the belief that he was still a fuckup and always would be. Underneath was the certainty that there was no such thing as a fresh start. He would have reacted the same way to Bateman, or to a twelve-year-old kid. In any triangle situation he was going to see himself as the lowest point.
"Harold," he said, almost into Harold's ear.
"Let me go." His heavy body seemed light in its tension; he was thrumming like alive wire.
"Harold, are you sleeping with her?"
Harold's body gave a shivering jerk and Stu knew he was not.
"None of your business!"
"No. Except to get things out where we can see them. She's not mine, Harold. She's her own. I'm not going to try to take her away from you. I'm sorry to have to speak so blunt, but it's best for us to know where we stand. We're two and one now and if you go off, we're two and one again. No gain."
Harold said nothing, but his trembling hand subsided.
"I'll be just as plain as I have to," Stu went on, still speaking very nearly into Harold's ear (which was clotted with brown wax), and taking the trouble to speak very, very calmly. "You know and I know that there's no need for a man to be rapin women. Not if he knows what to do with his hand."
"That's-" Harold licked his lips and then looked over at the side of the road where Fran was still standing, hands cupping elbows, arms crossed just below her breasts, watching them anxiously. "That's pretty disgusting."
"Well maybe it is and maybe it isn't, but when a man's around a woman who doesn't want him in bed, that man's got his choice. I pick the hand every time. I guess you do too since she's still with you of her own free will. I just want to speak plain, between you and me. I'm not here to squeeze you out like some bully at a country fair dance."
Harold's hand relaxed on the gun and he looked at Stu. "You mean that? I … you promise you won't tell?"
Stu nodded.
"I love her," Harold said hoarsely. "She doesn't love me, I know that, but I'm speaking plainly, like you said."
"That's best. I don't want to cut in. I just want to come along."
Compulsively, Harold repeated: "You promise?"
"Yeah, I do."
"All right."
He got slowly off the Honda. He and Stu walked back to Fran.
"He can come," Harold said. "And I … " He looked at Stu and said with difficult dignity, "I apologize for being such an asshole."
"Hooray!" Fran said, and clapped her hands. "Now that that's settled, where are we going?"
In the end they went in the direction Fran and Harold had been headed in, west. Stu said he thought Glen Bateman would be glad to have them overnight, if they could reach Woodsville by dark-and he might agree to tag along with them in the morning (at this Harold began to glower again). Stu drove Fran's Honda, and she rode pillion behind Harold. They stopped in Twin Mountain for lunch and began the slow, cautious business of getting to know each other. Their accents sounded funny to Stu, the way they broadened their a's and dropped or modified their r's. He supposed he sounded just as funny to them, maybe funnier.
They ate in an abandoned lunchroom and Stu found his gaze was drawn again and again to Fran's face-her lively eyes, the small but determined set of her chin, the way that line formed between her eyes, indexing her emotions. He liked the way she looked and talked; he even liked the way her dark hair was drawn back from her temples. And that was the beginning of his knowing that he did want her, after all.
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