Read Online The Terror of Living by Urban Waite - Free Book Online Page A

promises."
        "That's not an answer," Nora said. "That's not any kind of answer. If you need to run, you will. Now, you promise me one way or another."
        
        
        THIS IS SO EXCITING," SHERI SAID. SHE WAS STANDING at the window looking down on the freeway and the crosscut of the city streets. They were on the twenty-second floor of the Sheraton. Below, she could see the yellow lights from a tow truck swing and touch the cement of a nearby overpass. "You think they'll make you an agent or something?"
        "I don't think so," Drake answered. He had risen from the bed and come over to the window to look out on the city. He wore a pair of his college basketball shorts and a thin white T. His short brown hair was beginning to go at an early age, and he reached up unconsciously to tousle it and bring it down across his brow. Sheri had her hand up on the window. She stood on her tiptoes looking down. "Come away from the window," Drake said. "You make me nervous."
        "What, this?" She leaned into the window and put her other hand on the glass.
        "Stop playing."
        "Don't you live dangerously? Isn't that how you got here?"
        "I'd rather be back home where I know what I'm doing."
        "Back home with your two hundred and forty-three citizens."
        He could see she was enjoying this. "Yes, back home where we belong."
        "Live it up. Treat it like a vacation."
        "It's not a vacation. It's more like protective services."
        "I don't see a guard on the door."
        "I'm your guard." He picked her up and threw her on the bed. She laughed and rolled off the other side and was back up with her hands held out in front of her, waiting for his next move.
        "A little wrestling?" she said, cocking her eyebrow at him.
        He threw a pillow at her.
        "Play fair," she said.
        He walked over and pulled her sweats to her knees.
        "Damn it, Bobby," she said, smiling. "I said fair, not perverted." She pulled her pants back up.
        "You asked for it."
        They lay down on the bed and ordered room service. After they had finished their meal, Drake went to stand at the window. The tow truck was still there, the lights going. Sheri called from the bed to ask him what he was looking at. "Just this accident down here."
        "How many cars?"
        "Looks to be about three."
        "That's a bad one."
        "It's certainly not a good one."
        "I feel bad for people like that."
        "People like what?"
        "People who get stranded. I hate passing them on the road."
        "Why don't you pick them up, then?"
        "I think I would if I saw them out there alone."
        "No, you wouldn't," he said.
        "Well, probably not, but I'd still feel bad for them."
        "I always think maybe they had it coming."
        "That's a terrible thing to say."
        Drake believed wayward souls were responsible for their own salvation. He didn't have any other way of thinking about it, nor did he want to. The scars ran deep, and he thought that if healing was going to come, it would come from within and grow outward. He didn't say any of this to his wife, though he'd been thinking about it. Finally, compromising with a simple statement of the facts, he said, "Bad drivers cause accidents," as if he'd been born to believe it.
        "Listen to you," she said. "Any number of things cause accidents."
        "Well, bad drivers cause most of them."
        "Not very compassionate, are you?"
        "It's how I rationalize it," Drake said. "If I went around saying all these people are good, I think it would break my heart. It would just tear it all to pieces."
        "What do you have to say about those two men in the mountains? Are they good people?"
        "I don't know. How can you tell something like that?"
        "I don't think you can," Sheri said.
        "Well, maybe that's it then. Maybe I was