Runaway

see?’ ‘What color hair?’ ‘Tall or short?’ I could do it with the words, I could do it with tiny inflections of my voice. Going into more and more detail. That was just our opening shot.”
    “You should write about that.”
    “I did intend to. I thought of an exposé sort of thing. But then I thought, who would care anyway? People want to be fooled, or they don’t want to be fooled. They don’t go on evidence. Another thing I thought of was a mystery novel. It’s a natural milieu. I thought it would make a lot of money and we could get out. And I thought about a movie script. Did you ever see that Fellini movie—?”
    Nancy said no.
    “Hogwash, anyway. I don’t mean the Fellini movie. I mean the ideas I had. At that time.”
    “Tell me about Tessa.”
    “I must have written you. Didn’t I write you?”
    “No.”
    “I must have written Wilf.”
    “I think he would have told me.”
    “Well. Maybe I didn’t. Maybe I was at too low a point then.”
    “What year was it?”
    Ollie could not remember. The Korean War was on. Harry Truman was president. It seemed at first as if Tessa only had the flu. But she did not get better, she grew weaker, and became covered with mysterious bruises. She had leukemia.
    They were holed up in a town in the mountains in the heat of summer. They had been hoping to get to California before winter. They were not able even to make it to their next booking. The people they had been travelling with went on without them. Ollie got some work at the radio station in the town. He had developed a good voice doing the show with Tessa. He read the news on the radio, and he did a lot of the ads. He wrote some of them, too. Their regular man was off taking the gold cure, or something, in a hospital for drunks.
    He and Tessa moved from the hotel to a furnished apartment. There was no air-conditioning, naturally, but luckily it had a bit of a balcony with a tree hanging over it. He pushed the couch up there so Tessa could get the fresh air. He didn’t want to have to take her to the hospital—money came into this too, of course, for they had no insurance of any kind—but he also thought she was more peaceful there, where she could watch the leaves stirring. But eventually he had to take her in, and there in a matter of a couple of weeks, she died.
    “Is she buried there?” said Nancy. “Didn’t you think that we would send you money?”
    “No,” he said. “No, to both. I mean, I didn’t think of asking. I felt that it was my responsibility. And I had her cremated. I skipped town with the ashes. I managed to get to the Coast. It was practically the last thing she had said to me, that she wanted to be cremated and she wanted to be scattered on the waves of the Pacific Ocean.”
    So that was what he had done, he said. He remembered the Oregon coast, the strip of beach between the ocean and the highway, the fog and chilliness of the early morning, the smell of the seawater, the melancholy booming of the waves. He had taken off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pant legs and waded in, and the gulls came after him to see if he had anything for them. But it was only Tessa he had.
    “Tessa—” said Nancy. Then she couldn’t go on.
    “I became a drunk after that. I functioned after a fashion, but for a long time I was deadwood at the center. Till I just had to pull out of it.”
    He did not look up at Nancy. There was a heavy moment, while he fingered the ashtray.
    “I suppose you found that life goes on,” said Nancy.
    He sighed. Reproach and relief.
    “Sharp tongue, Nancy.”
    He drove her back to the hotel where she was staying. There was a lot of clanking of gear in the van, and a shuddering and rattling throughout the vehicle itself.
    The hotel was not particularly expensive or luxurious—there was no doorman about, no mound of carnivorous-looking flowers to be glimpsed within—and yet when Ollie said, “I bet there hasn’t been any old heap like this drive up here in a while,” Nancy had to laugh and agree with him.
    “What about your ferry?”
    “Missed it. Ages ago.”
    “Where will you sleep?”
    “Friends in Horseshoe Bay. Or I’ll be all right in here, if I don’t feel like waking them up. I’ve slept here enough times before.”
    Her room had two beds in it. Twin beds. She might get a dirty look or two, trailing him in, but surely she could stand that. Since the truth would be a far cry from what anybody might be thinking.
    She took a