“I have my reasons,” Gillian said. She was sitting in front of her mirror, applying blush into the hollows of her cheeks. “And they are all spelled C-A-S-H.”
Gillian swore that a woman had been following her for several days, and had finally approached her that afternoon. She had offered Gillian two thousand dollars, there, on the spot, if Gillian would accompany her to a salon and have her hair clipped off to the ears so this woman with short, mousy hair could have a false braid to wear to parties.
“Sure,” Sally said. “Like anyone in their right mind would ever do that.”
“Really?” Gillian said. “You don’t think anyone would?”
She reached into the front pocket of her jeans and pulled out a roll of money. The two thousand, in cash. Gillian had a huge smile on her face, and maybe Sally just wanted to wipe it right off.
“Well, you look awful,” she said. “You look like a boy.”
She said it even though she could see that Gillian had an incredibly pretty neck, so slim and sweet the mere sight of it would make grown men cry.
“Oh, who cares?” Gillian said. “It’ll grow back.”
But her hair never grew long again—it wouldn’t reach past her shoulders. Gillian washed it with rosemary, with violets and rose petals and even ginseng tea—none of it did any good.
“That’s what you get,” Sally announced. “That’s where greed will take you.”
But where has being such a good girl and a prig taken Sally? It’s brought her to this parking lot on a damp and dreadful night. It’s put her in her place, once and for all. Who is she to be so righteous and certain her way is best? If she’d simply called the police when Gillian first arrived, if she hadn’t had to take charge and manage it all, if she hadn’t believed that everything—both the cause and the effect—was her responsibility, she and Gillian might not be in the fix they’re in right now. It’s the smoke emanating from the walls of their parents’ bungalow. It’s the swans in the park. It’s the stop sign no one notices, until it’s too late.
Sally has spent her whole life being vigilant, and that takes logic and good common sense. If her parents had had her with them she would have smelled the acrid scent of fire, she knows that she would. She would have seen the blue spark that fell onto the rug, the first of many, where it glittered like a star, and then a river of stars, shiny and blue on the shag carpeting just before it all burst into flame. On that day when the teenagers had had too much to drink before they got into one of their daddies’ cars, she would have pulled Michael back to the curb. Didn’t she save her baby from the swans when they tried to attack her? Hasn’t she taken care of everything since—her children and the house, her lawn and her electricity bill, her laundry, which, when it hangs on the line, is even whiter than snow?
From the very start, Sally has been lying to herself, telling herself she can handle anything, and she doesn’t want to lie anymore. One more lie and she’ll be truly lost. One more and she’ll never find her way back through the woods.
Sally gulps her diet Coke; she’s dying of thirst. Her throat actually hurts from those lies she told Gary Hallet. She wants to come clean, she wants to tell all, she wants someone to listen to what she has to say and really hear her, the way no one ever has before. When she sees Gary crossing the Turnpike, carrying a tub of fried chicken, she knows she could start her car and get away before he recognizes her. But she stays where she is. As she watches Gary walk in her direction, a line of heat criss-crosses itself beneath her skin. It’s invisible, but it’s there. That’s the way desire is, it ambushes you in a parking lot, it wins every time. The closer Gary gets, the worse it is, until Sally has to slip one hand under her shirt and press down, just to ensure that her heart won’t escape from her body.
The world seems gray, and the roads are slick, but Gary doesn’t mind the dim and somber night. There have been nothing but blue skies in Tucson for months, and Gary isn’t bothered by a little rain. Maybe rain will cure the way he feels inside, and wash away his worries. Maybe he can get on the plane tomorrow at nine twenty-five, smile at the flight attendant, then catch a couple of hours’ sleep before he has to report into the office.
In his line of work, Gary is trained to notice things, but he can’t quite believe what he’s seeing now. Part of the reason for this is that he’s been imagining Sally everywhere he goes. He thought he spied her at a crosswalk on the Turnpike as he was driving here, and again in the fried-chicken place, and now here she is in the parking lot. She’s probably another illusion, what he wants to see rather than what’s right in front of him. Gary walks closer to the Honda and narrows his eyes. That’s Sally’s car, it is, and that’s her, there behind the wheel, honking the horn at him.
Gary opens the car door, gets into the passenger seat, and slams the door shut. His hair and his clothes are damp, and the bucket of chicken he has with him is steamy hot and smells like oil.
“I thought it was you,” he says.
He needs to fold his legs up to fit in this car; he balances the bucket of chicken on his lap.
“It was Jimmy’s ring,” Sally says.
She didn’t plan to spill it immediately, but maybe it’s just as well. She’s staring at Gary for his reaction, but he’s simply looking back at her. God, she wishes she smoked or drank or something. The tension is so bad that it feels as though it were at least a hundred and thirty degrees inside the car. Sally is surprised she doesn’t just burst into flame.
“Well?” she says finally. “We were lying to you. That ring in my kitchen belonged to James Hawkins.”
“I know.” Gary sounds even more worried now than before. She’s the one, and he knows it. Under certain circumstances, he might be willing to give up everything for Sally Owens. He might be willing to leap headlong into this ravine he feels coming up, without considering how fast he’d be falling or how brutal the moment of impact might be. Gary combs his wet hair back with his fingers and, for a moment, the whole car smells like rain. “Have you had dinner?” He lifts the bucket of chicken. He’s also got onion rings and fries.
“I couldn’t eat,” Sally tells him.
Gary opens the door and sets the bucket outside in the rain. He has definitely lost his appetite for chicken.
“I might pass out,” Sally warns him. “I feel like I’m going to have a stroke.”
“Is that because you understand I have to ask if you or your sister know where Hawkins is?”
That is not the reason. Sally is hot right down to her fingertips. She takes her hands off the steering wheel so steam doesn’t rise from beneath her cuticles, and places both hands in her lap. “I’ll tell you where he is.” Gary Hallet is looking at her as if the Hide-A-Way Motel and all the rest of the Turnpike didn’t even exist. “Dead,” Sally says.
Gary thinks this over while the rain taps against the roof of the car. They can’t see out the windshield, and the windows are fogged up.
“It was an accident,” Sally says now. “Not that he didn’t deserve it. Not that he wasn’t the biggest pig alive.”
“He went to my high school.” Gary speaks slowly, with an ache in his voice. “He was always bad news. People say that he shot twelve ponies at a ranch that refused to hire him for a summer job. Shot them in the head, one by one.”
“There you go,” Sally says. “There you have it.”
“You want me to forget about him? Is that what you’re asking me to do?”
“He won’t hurt anyone anymore,” Sally says. “That’s the important thing.”
The woman who works in the motel office has run outside, wearing a black rain poncho and carrying a broom she’ll use to try to unclog the gutters before tomorrow’s predicted storm. Sally herself isn’t thinking about her gutters. She’s not wondering if her girls thought to close the windows, and at this moment she doesn’t care if her roof will make it through gale-force winds.