In the night room Page 0,76
kidding, are you? You’re actually gay? You can’t be that gay, though. If you weren’t incredibly turned on, I have no idea of what’s going on, anywhere. You were like, I don’t know, like Zeus coming down in a shower of gold.”
She slid around on his lap, straddled him, and moved her head close to his and looked deep into his eyes.
“I thought so, too,” he said. “It was exactly like that. I’m astoundingly attached to you.” He spoke with all the frankness the moment would allow. “There’s a reason for all this, Willy, and you’re going to find out what it is.”
“I certainly hope so.”
She had taken his remark as an attempt at general encouragement. He said, “I’m not speaking loosely, Willy. You do have something to find out, and it’s extremely important.”
She pulled her head back. “Is this whatever Tom kept saying he had to tell me, only the time was never right?”
“No. They’re related, but what Tom was talking about is something else.”
“And you know what that was, that secret, or whatever.”
He nodded.
“So he told you, but he didn’t tell me?”
“Not exactly.”
She cocked her head. “What does that mean? Either he told you, or he didn’t. Which one was it?”
“He didn’t, Willy. It’s just something I know.”
“So this is like general knowledge? If I put in the right terms, I could look it up on Google?”
“It’s nothing like that.”
“But now there are two big secrets. I don’t like this. It’s skeevy.”
Skeevy? Tim thought. Like agency, it was a word he would never use.
“What makes Timothy Underhill willing to risk injury, death, and imprisonment on behalf of a woman he just met? Why would he even consider driving her halfway across the country?”
“Timothy doesn’t feel he has much choice.”
He put his arms around her, and the moment of tension passed. They clung to each other as if they were stranded on a rock. Tim kissed her forehead, and she sighed and tightened her grip.
“Do you want anything to eat?” he asked.
“I guess.” She nestled into him, pressed the side of her head to his chest, drew in her legs. She weighed nothing, and her bones seemed made of water. “Will we get to Millhaven today?”
“I think so, yes. We’ll get to Indiana, then drive north. I want to get there in time to do a couple of things before the reading.” Also, Tim could feel Cyrax as though he were present in the room, and he was saying, Get to Millhaven, buttsecks, and do yr job! You caused this mess, now you SOLVE it! It was time for another fragment of the mosaic: Willy had to understand everything before they got to Millhaven.
“What was the name of your second-grade teacher?”
“Who cares?” She unhooked the bra she was wearing and tossed it toward her suitcase. “I don’t even think I remember.”
“Mine was named Mrs. Gross. I remember that, and I’m a lot older than you are. You should be able to remember her name, Willy.”
Willy closed her eyes and put her hands on the sides of her head. Her face tightened into a grimace. “Okay, okay,” she said. “I think my second-grade teacher’s name was Mrs. Gross, too. Maybe we had the same one. Did you go to . . .” Again, she squinched up her face and pressed her hands to the sides of her head. “Ahhh . . . Freeman? Lawrence Freeman Elementary School?”
“Yes, I did,” he said.
“Well, there’s your answer! We went to the same school, we probably had a lot of the same teachers.”
“Kind of funny, though, isn’t it, that the school is right behind the St. Alwyn Hotel, in Pigtown, and the Children’s Home is way over on the north side of town.”
“I’m going into the shower, sorry. Come on, you’re getting hard again, let’s get this guy in the shower and see what he does when he’s wet.”
Tim found both amusement and a kind of wonder in having so underestimated his heroine’s sexual frankness and appetite. They forgot their worries until their hunger brought them back to the world. For Tim Underhill, every time he made love to Willy, his darling and his invention, he became more attached and involved, deepening the process that had started when he had placed her, like a figure on a chessboard, in front of the Michigan Produce warehouse.
At the end of their breakfast in the Swan Room, Mr. Davy told them that he had been visited by the police. Willy had displayed an amazing appetite, eating all