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Authors: Michael Marshall
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table's napkin dispenser. Her hair was dyed a funny shade or two of lurid blonde and had she been a refrigerator you could have stored a lot of food inside. And yet there was something very appealing about her, something true about her ordinariness. Strange how it could be that way. Good, capable hands and a nice attitude made more difference than people thought. Jim realized, with mild wonder, that it had been over a decade since he'd had sex. The thought brought him little but relief.
He stirred a spoonful of sugar into the brew and looked out the window a while longer. It was coming down to it, now. He had dragged his feet, made as if coming north meant fighting some natural slope in the landscape which his car was not equal to. Now he was only an hour or so from his first destination, and it was time to stop pretending. He was going where he was going, unless he stopped now. There were miles still to drive, but they were getting fewer. This was the time, this lacuna. If he was going to not do something, now was the time to start not doing it.
The feeling in his guts was one he recognized. A hollow tension, so muted it could perhaps be hunger. He glanced at the menu propped up against the sill and rejected its contents once more. He knew he should have something to eat. Someone two tables over had taken a corned beef sandwich a little while back and it had smelled fine, the bread lightly toasted, sauerkraut warm and rich, the sauce good and thick the way Jim liked it. He had always had very specific tastes in food. Maybe if he ate, the feeling would go away.
Did he want that?
He did not know. He truly did not know.
So he sipped his coffee until it was finished and then left, leaving a dollar tip on a dollar fifty purchase, hoping it went to the right waitress.
When he got back in the car he noticed the bag on the passenger seat, and was confused for just a moment. Of course. He barely remembered buying the contents, at an outlet mall a little south of Jacksonville. But he had bought it, he knew, just as he had acquired a much heavier item before even leaving the Keys, and so he supposed that meant he had made his decision.
And it didn't matter anyway. It had already been made for him. The sphere turns, and the heart pumps and blood flows, regardless of what you feel on the subject.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Eighty miles up the way he took the turn to Benboro. He took a wrong fork soon after that and had to retrace a little. It was not an area he knew well, nor one which made great effort to make things easier for outsiders. People would only ever be passing through. There were patches of anonymous woodland now and then but usually the land was flat either side of the road.
After Benboro it was simpler — there was only one road out of the town, such as it was. A mile along it was a big tilted sign on the right. It had been pale green last time Jim saw it, but in the intervening years it had been repainted red: some while ago, judging by the state of it. It looked as though the job had been done by someone who was dimly familiar with letters as shapes, rather than as things that conveyed meaning.
BENBORO PARK, they said.
He pulled over and headed up the access road. He had known it would still be here: impulse calls once every couple of years had proved someone still answered the phone at the number for the trailer park. He had not stayed on the line long enough to find out if it was the old woman he had met, or to ensure the park itself was still in business. People lived there, had done so for years. There was no reason for it to go under, turning families and old couples and wild-haired single individuals out into the unknown. Benboro town itself had the dynamism of an old sock. Nobody was going to be developing subdivisions or building a business park outside it anytime soon.
And what was it to him, anyway?
Yet still he had called, every couple of years.
The drive took a curving path that had probably looked artful
He stirred a spoonful of sugar into the brew and looked out the window a while longer. It was coming down to it, now. He had dragged his feet, made as if coming north meant fighting some natural slope in the landscape which his car was not equal to. Now he was only an hour or so from his first destination, and it was time to stop pretending. He was going where he was going, unless he stopped now. There were miles still to drive, but they were getting fewer. This was the time, this lacuna. If he was going to not do something, now was the time to start not doing it.
The feeling in his guts was one he recognized. A hollow tension, so muted it could perhaps be hunger. He glanced at the menu propped up against the sill and rejected its contents once more. He knew he should have something to eat. Someone two tables over had taken a corned beef sandwich a little while back and it had smelled fine, the bread lightly toasted, sauerkraut warm and rich, the sauce good and thick the way Jim liked it. He had always had very specific tastes in food. Maybe if he ate, the feeling would go away.
Did he want that?
He did not know. He truly did not know.
So he sipped his coffee until it was finished and then left, leaving a dollar tip on a dollar fifty purchase, hoping it went to the right waitress.
When he got back in the car he noticed the bag on the passenger seat, and was confused for just a moment. Of course. He barely remembered buying the contents, at an outlet mall a little south of Jacksonville. But he had bought it, he knew, just as he had acquired a much heavier item before even leaving the Keys, and so he supposed that meant he had made his decision.
And it didn't matter anyway. It had already been made for him. The sphere turns, and the heart pumps and blood flows, regardless of what you feel on the subject.
===OO=OOO=OO===
Eighty miles up the way he took the turn to Benboro. He took a wrong fork soon after that and had to retrace a little. It was not an area he knew well, nor one which made great effort to make things easier for outsiders. People would only ever be passing through. There were patches of anonymous woodland now and then but usually the land was flat either side of the road.
After Benboro it was simpler — there was only one road out of the town, such as it was. A mile along it was a big tilted sign on the right. It had been pale green last time Jim saw it, but in the intervening years it had been repainted red: some while ago, judging by the state of it. It looked as though the job had been done by someone who was dimly familiar with letters as shapes, rather than as things that conveyed meaning.
BENBORO PARK, they said.
He pulled over and headed up the access road. He had known it would still be here: impulse calls once every couple of years had proved someone still answered the phone at the number for the trailer park. He had not stayed on the line long enough to find out if it was the old woman he had met, or to ensure the park itself was still in business. People lived there, had done so for years. There was no reason for it to go under, turning families and old couples and wild-haired single individuals out into the unknown. Benboro town itself had the dynamism of an old sock. Nobody was going to be developing subdivisions or building a business park outside it anytime soon.
And what was it to him, anyway?
Yet still he had called, every couple of years.
The drive took a curving path that had probably looked artful
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