Shallow Graves

some of them don’t. I see.”
    “Wex.” There was a bony edge to her voice. Ambler didn’t believe he’d heard this sound before. He wondered if they were going to have their first serious argument. That would be very bad—in light of what he was planning to tell her.
    She continued, “Don’t disrupt things. Between us, I mean.”
    “Is something wrong?”
    “No, nothing’s wrong. What do you mean?”
    This was sounding like the conversations he used to have with his wife. Before he fell out of love with her.
    He backed off. “You just seem . . . I don’t know.”
    She said, “We were just having a discussion. Don’t take it personally.”
    “You’re the one who seems to be picking a fight.”
    “I am not.”
    After a moment he felt her stiffen and draw away from him. Only millimeters—but it was enough so that he refused to do what he instinctively wanted to and touch her leg in a chaste way, seeking forgiveness for his vague crimes.
    The day wasn’t going as he’d planned. Not at all. He wished they hadn’t made love. It tilted the balance of power against him. Men and women. Never changes.
    He felt a shudder of pain and anger course through him.
    There was silence for a long moment. He debated then wiped his sweating palm on the sheet. “Can I ask you something?”
    She didn’t answer.
    Ambler said, “We’ve been seeing each other now for, what? Six months?”
    She said a neutral, “About that.”
    “I was thinking. . . . I’m not good at this.” (The same way he hadn’t been very good at asking her out the first time, he recalled.)
    She softened. He knew that she had a weakness for chivalrous, struggling men. “What are you trying to say, Wex?”
    At least the terrible edge was gone from her voice.
    His mind went blank, then he blurted: “I think we should get married.”
    He wanted to be light about it. He wanted to joke. Like middle-aged couples on sitcoms. Snappy comebacks. Rejoinders. Mugging for the camera. He couldn’t think of a single thing else to say.
    And from her: Utter silence. As if she’d even stopped breathing.
    It couldn’t have been that she’d never considered this before, could it? Was he so far off base that he’d completely misjudged? His heart pounded. He actually heard it.
    Her hand touched his arm. “We said we’d never think about it.”
    “That was before.” He looked futilely for some appropriate milestone in their relationship—the twenty-fifth time they’d had sex? The twelfth candlelit dinner together? The sixtieth time they’d laughed at a private joke?
    She sat up and reached for the night table. The light snapped on. It was a low bulb, which she’d asked him to put in the lamp. He knew she hated bright lights.
    Meg Torrens pulled the comforter around her shoulders and said, “Oh, Wex.”
    And in his name, spoken through a loving, gentle smile, he heard the word No as clearly as if she’d shouted it.
    TO SLEEP IN A SHALLOW GRAVE/
BIG MOUNTAIN STUDIOS
    EXT. ROAD TO BOLT’S CROSSING, NEAR FOREST—DAY
    ECU: JANICE’S FACE. It is not aged so much as weathered. You can see in it the hampered beauty of a woman at forty. An earth mother. She was at Woodstock. She cried at Woodstock and got stoned there. The long hair falls across her face, subdividing it into patches of ruddy skin. She brushes it aside. The wind pushes it back.
    MEDIUM ANGLE: SHEP. He’s leaning against his motorcycle. The lights should be gelled magenta to put an aura on the chrome, harmonizing with the sunset that’s approaching behind them. He’s torn. He’s told her he’s leaving, and he wants to go. But also wants desperately to find something about her that will keep him from leaving. Is it pity? Or is it something more genuine, more mutual? He doesn’t know.
    Pellam sat in his hot camper—though he was really in Bolts’ Crossing, not Cleary, New York.
    Which was where he needed to be at the moment.
    In Bolts’ Crossing, there was no stinking hulk of a car, punctuated with scorched tufts of upholstery shooting outward like patches of hair.
    In Bolts’ Crossing, the only people lying still in funeral parlors weren’t dead at all and in four scenes would be prowling around in flashbacks, lusting and ornery and laughing.
    In Bolts’ Crossing, people like Marty never died.
    CUT TO:
    MEDIUM ANGLES, CROSSCUTTING between Janice and Shep
    JANICE
    I took a chance you might be here.
    SHEP
    (Avoiding her eyes) Brakes gave me some trouble. Thought I should