The Boat House Read Online Free PDF Page B

place, but no one seemed to worry. Few of the tables matched each other, and none of the chairs did; the floor was bare and the tablecloths were checkered plastic, and some driver with a deep reverence for Willie Nelson had spent all of his spare change at the jukebox. There were three pinball machines, and as Pete went over to place an order at the service counter she went over to take a look at them. The most garishly lit of the three was a game called Sun Runner , and when Pete joined her she was studying it. He put down some change, and showed her how to play. The pinball table was old, its glass split and some of its bulbs dead, probably edged out of some arcade by newer and flashier video games. He tried to see this ordinary, common place and this brokendown machine through her eyes. But he didn't know how.
    He said, "What are you going to do?"
    She shrugged, her eyes on the silver ball as it made its rounds of the table and ran up almost a thousand points in a frenzied dalliance with the bonus section. The lights flashed and the bells rang, and the silver ball made a quick exit down the left hand side of the layout where the flippers couldn't reach.
    "Do you know anyone?" he persisted. "Have you got anywhere to go?"
    Again, she didn't answer. She didn't have to.
    "Any money?"
    "More than seventy pounds."
    "It won't last."
    "I know. But I'm feeling lucky."
    Her last ball shot around the table and dropped out of sight with a zero score.
    Their order came up, and they moved across to a table in the window. A red neon sign hung against the glass, and its backglow was like the rays of a sunset. He hadn't had much of a chance to study her, not in the comparatively short time that they'd been on the road, but he'd started to catch up during the game and he carried on with it now. Even in the soft red light she seemed tired, a mechanism of some elegance and delicacy that was being pushed too far.
    For a moment, he wondered what they'd make of her in the valley.
    But then he let it go.
    "You should go to the police," he told her.
    Her reply was quick and emphatic. "No."
    "They're the people to handle something like this."
    "No police," she said.
    She seemed genuinely scared of the very idea, and so he didn't press it. It was the first time that she'd shown even a hint of strong feeling, and it was like a powerful heat that made him back away. Whatever her experiences in that direction might have been, they clearly hadn't been good.
    There was an awkward silence for a while, and Pete wondered if there was any way to repair the mood that he'd managed almost to destroy. He'd grown to like her company and, although he knew that he'd be losing it before the night was over, he didn't want to see it go with bad feeling. She rubbed at her eyes, and Pete could see how close to the edge she'd been driven. Something was holding her together, but he couldn't have said what.
    Then he had an idea.
    "A suggestion," he said.

FOUR
    After hearing him out, she'd reached across the table as if to take his hand. But she'd touched his sleeve instead, a stand-in gesture for two people who didn't know each other well enough for the real thing; and then, five minutes later, they'd been walking back to the car. It had come home to Pete how awesomely alone she must be; and after the day that he'd had, he could feel himself sliding into perfect harmony with her outlook.
    An outsider, and an outcast. They made a neat kind of set.
    This time, he dug out his old road atlas from under one of the seats and took no chances with his navigation. It should take no more than a half hour to get to where they needed to go. After leaving her, and by driving through most of what was left of the night, he could still get back to the valley by dawn.
    They did a slow drive past before they pulled in. Pete flicked on the Zodiac's interior light to check the address on the paper that Mike had given to him, and it was right. The Russian woman was looking out of the window.