"Wilhelm,_Kate_-_Julian(1)" - читать интересную книгу автора (Wilhelm Kate)

"Julian, it has to be something like that, anything else is impossible. People can't simply dry off like that. You were a little kid. You could remember it wrong."
Again he shook his head. "Let's drop it. Hungry? I'm starved."
"Julian, wait..." But he had waved to the waitress, and she became silent, watching him.
"It's all right," Julian said. "Don't let it bug you. Okay?"
"Sure."
They ordered. Julian asked her about her summer plans and hardly listened to her answer, which seemed involved and complicated. He had to go back to Cincinnati, he knew, and to check out the people who had been there. When? He didn't know the date, just that it had been late in the school season, near the end of his sixth grade. There had been seven cars parked there, he remembered clearly, and recalled the man cutting grass, the dog running, children playing in the pool.
"Julian? Please, let's just eat and get out of here."
Rachel's voice was strained, and he realized that the waitress had brought their orders.
"Sorry," he said. Rachel looked at her soup. He did not know anything else to say. What he would have given last year to be sitting across the table from her, talking with her like this, he thought, and then, not only last year, last month even. Or yesterday. It never occurred to him to wonder why she was with him, why she was bothering. He felt only impatience. He wanted to eat and go back to his room and call his father for money. There had to be a decent reason, not just a little jaunt to Cincinnati. Special study course? Research project? He would think of something. He looked up to find Rachel studying him again.
"Will you do me a favor?" she asked quietly. "Will you talk to Dr. Yates?"
He shook his head. "No reason now," he said, smiling. "Yesterday there was, but not now."
"You know I switched my major from math to psychology. I don't pretend to know much yet, but I think what you're doing is dangerous, more than repressing a memory even."
"Your quiche is getting cold," he said. "I'm okay. Just don't do the Jewish mother bit."
Carefully she put down her fork, gathered her purse and umbrella, and stood up. "I have to run, Julian. See you around."
He watched her go, then finished his French Dip sandwich, ate her quiche, which she had hardly touched, and went to his dorm to call home.
* * * *
The next morning, Saturday, he flew to Cincinnati, and went straight to the motel, which had been changed drastically by the addition of two new wings, and a much larger pool, and tennis courts. It was now owned by a chain, and the manager was unhelpful.
"I don't know anything about it back then," she said. She was in her forties, with hard brown eyes and polished white hair that looked like plaster. "The company bought it two years ago and remodeled, rebuilt, and I've been here almost the whole time. Before that I don't know."
He counted his money and knew he could not afford to hang around until the courthouse opened on Monday in order to check the record of sales of the motel. On the flight back he brooded about his naivetщ in thinking that just like that he could find out anything. He needed time, all summer if necessary. He would find that woman who was not a woman, was not human at all. He would find her, or it.
In Cincinnati he washed dishes and slept in a dormitory at the YMCA, and he learned that the motel had changed hands four times in the past ten years. The last owner lived in Atlanta.
In Atlanta the previous owner sent him to San Antonio where he was told about a tornado that had wrecked the business eight years ago and killed Mrs. Gunn, the wife of the owner then. Mr. Gunn had gone to a farm on the Ohio, near Waterton.
* * * *
"You were supposed to turn over the books when you sold the business," Julian said. "But you didn't. Where are your books, Mr. Gunn?"
The old man blinked lazily and shrugged. "Damned if I know. So water-soaked wasn't no reason to turn 'em over to no one. Roof got torn off, you know. Whole damn roof, whoosh right off."
"You must have them somewhere," Julian said desperately, glancing about the trailer where Timothy Gunn lived, on the rear of his son's property.
"Might be here somewhere," the old man agreed. "Wouldn't pay me to stir around, get excited and hot hunting for 'em."
"I'll buy them," Julian said quickly. "Ten dollars."
The old man smiled and shook his head.
"Twenty. It's all I have, Mr. Gunn. Please. I'm trying to find my mother. For ten years I thought she was dead until this summer when I learned my father had driven her away, and she went to your motel. I have to find her. She might be sick, need help." Julian blinked back tears of frustration at this senile old man and his complacent grin.
"Calm down, son. Just take it easy. Reckon them books ain't going to do me a hell of a lot of good, now are they? Ten dollars, you say?" He went to the bed and pulled out a storage drawer, drew out the books.
"I just need that one, for May," Julian said quickly.
"All or nothing," the old man said, as if driving a hard bargain. "Just keep cluttering up the place with all that old junk. All or nothing."
Julian almost snatched the books away from him, and yanked the right one to the top of the stack. There were watermarks on the cover, but inside the ink was legible. He flipped pages and found May. There it was, it had to be! May 29, 30, 31. Stella Johnson. Stella! He almost laughed.
"Reckon you found what you're looking for," the old man said genially. He sat down again, dismissing Julian. "Good luck, son. Ten years is a hell of a long time to be without someone you care anything for."
* * * *
"Hey, that's a pretty heavy foot you got there, kid." The man in the passenger seat stirred and sat upright yawning. Julian was driving his car, somewhere between Phoenix and Los Angeles.
"Sorry," Julian said. He slowed down to sixty. "She sure wants to run, doesn't she? Great car."
The man nodded and started talking cars. This was Julian's third ride since leaving Ohio, and this would take him home. Stella Johnson had given an address in Los Angeles, had auto tags from California. His parents had moved to Los Angeles three years ago; he could make that his base of operations, search records again -- he was getting good at that -- and he would find her.
"You in training for the Indy or something?" the man beside him growled. "Stop the car. I'd better drive awhile."
Julian had nudged it up to ninety again.
* * * *
At the address Stella Johnson had given there was a gas station that had gone out of business so long ago that it was boarded up with wood turned ashen with age; twelve-foot trees were growing from the cracks in the broken concrete, and many years' accumulation of dumped trash behind it made a hill as high as its roof. He was not surprised. The license number had been bogus also.
For three days he had scurried around town looking up women named Johnson, then he had given it up. There was no reason to believe her name was less phony than any other information she had given.
Julian sat by the pool in his parents' back yard, and although he heard his mother approach, he did not look up. He waited to see if she had found yet another way to ask the two questions they besieged him with every day: What is the matter? and what are your plans?
"Julian? You okay?"
"Sure, Mother."
They had been so happy to learn that he had lost his phobia about water. For a week his parents had been practically manic in their relief, only to have new apprehensions creep in that made them exchange worried glances, or, worse, avoid looking directly at each other when he was around. He could imagine their whispered conversations about him when they thought he was sleeping. _Is he crazy, I mean really crazy this time? Or, you have to try to get him to see a doctor. He's your son._ Strange how he was always someone else's son if there was trouble, and "my son" when either of them wanted to brag a little.
"Julian, you know how worried we are about you. You don't say anything. You sit here for hours brooding. You have letters you haven't even bothered to open. You're in trouble of some kind, aren't you? That girl who keeps writing? Rachel? Money? A bad drug experience? You see, I can't even narrow it down to a possible cause. Julian, please let us help you. If you need professional advice of any kind..."
That was it, professional advice. From the start he had thought that he alone had caught a glimpse of one of them, but maybe that was wrong. Others might have seen them, might have reported them. Maybe there was a growing dossier on them, with every tidbit welcomed.
That afternoon he told Sergeant Manuel Vargas what he had seen ten years earlier. The sergeant nodded and wrote it all down.