Spencerville

every time he saw her, touched her, smelled her, he got tingly. She had made him take off his uniform and screwed him until he had nothing left, and he enjoyed every minute of it. She screwed other men, too, and this excited him even more. He knew she was corrupt to the core, heartless, and cold. But she was beautiful, so well dressed and made-up and clever, and she smiled at him, and he loved her in the flesh but hated her in his soul.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
    A t six P.M. , Keith checked out of the Hay-Adams and carried his own bag to the front door.
    “Taxi, sir?”
    “Please.”
    Keith waited with the doorman under the marquee. The doorman said, “Taxis are scarce with this rain.”
    “I see that.”
    “Airport?”
    “Right.”
    “Flights are delayed. Jack’s coming through Virginia Beach.”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Hurricane Jack. Tracking up the coast. It’ll miss us, but we’ll have gale-force winds and heavy rain all night. Did you check your flight, sir?”
    “No.”
    “National or Dulles?”
    “National.”
    The doorman shook his head. “Long delays. You might want to try Dulles, if you can.”
    A taxi pulled up, and the doorman opened the door. Keith got in and said to the driver, “How’s National?”
    “Down.”
    “Dulles?”
    “Still open.”
    “Dulles.”
    The ride to Dulles, normally forty-five minutes via the Dulles access highway, took over an hour, and the weather didn’t look much better inland. As they approached the airport, Keith saw no aircraft landing or taking off.
    The driver said, “Don’t look good, Chief. You want to go back?”
    “No.”
    The driver shrugged and continued on into the airport.
    Keith said, “USAir.”
    They arrived at USAir departures, and Keith noticed lines of people waiting for taxis. He went into the terminal and scanned the display monitors. Nearly every departing flight was delayed or canceled.
    He tried the ticket agents at several airlines, looking for a flight to any city within a few hundred miles of Spencerville, but no one was hopeful.
    At seven-thirty, Dulles Airport was officially closed until further notice.
    Keith saw that the crowds were thinning out as people left the terminal. Other people were settling in for a wait.
    He went to a bar in the terminal concourse. It was crowded with stranded travelers, but he got a beer and stood with a few other men and watched the TV mounted over the bar. Jack had made landfall at Ocean City, Maryland, and was stalled there, and the effects of the hurricane could be felt over a hundred miles from the eye. The general consensus seemed to be that nothing would be flying until dawn. But you never knew.
    This was not the first time in his life he’d been unable to catch a flight, and he knew it was no use worrying or getting angry about it. In other times and places, the situation had sometimes been critical, sometimes life-threatening. This time, it was important.
    It was now eight-fifteen P.M. , and he had a rendezvous at ten A.M. the next day in western Ohio. He considered his options. It was about three hundred air miles, less than a two-hour flight to Columbus, slightly longer to Toledo, longer yet to Dayton or Fort Wayne, Indiana. In any case, if he could get on a flight anytime around five A.M. , he’d be in Spencerville in a rental car about ten A.M. , but, with a stop at his farm, he wouldn’t be at his rendezvous until a few hours later. Still, he could call Annie’s sister Terry’s house from a public phone, at some point, and say he’d be delayed.
    But there was the likely possibility that air traffic would be stacked up in the morning and it might be much later before he could actually fly out of Dulles. Also, he wasn’t ticketed out of Dulles.
    He left the bar and went to the car rental counters, where there were long lines of people. He stood on the Avis line and eventually got to the counter. The young man behind the counter asked him, “Reservation, sir?”
    “No, but I need a car. Anything will do.”
    “Sorry, we have absolutely nothing here and nothing coming in tonight.”
    Keith had already figured that out. He asked, “How about your car? I’m going to Ohio. It’s a ten-hour drive. I’ll give you a thousand dollars, and you can sleep in the backseat.”
    The young man smiled. “Tempting, but—”
    “Think it over. Ask around. I’ll be at the pub in the concourse.”
    “I’ll ask around.”
    Keith went back to the bar and had another beer. The place was