Cold by John Smolens Page B

room and get some sleep.   Maybe clean up.”
    “I stink, huh?”
    After a moment, she smiled.   “Yeah, kinda.”
    “All right.”   He sat up on the cot.
    “Then what, Norman?”
    “I don’t know.   What you said in the letter really bugs me.”
    “There’s nothing you can do about it,” she said.   “You got to keep going now.”
    “But what you said in the letter, about your father and this guy Woo-San.   I wish—”
    “You can’t stay here, Norman.   You know that.”
    Reluctantly, he nodded his head.   He sat forward and rested his forearms on his knees.   “Bing, a friend inside, he said if he ever got out he’d go across the border and head out to the Canadian Rockies, maybe British Columbia.”
    “Sounds like a good plan,” she said.   “Last summer I went across to Soo Canada a couple of times, and customs never did much at all.   Same thing every time—where are you from, where are you going, what nationality are you, are you carrying any firearms?   Didn’t ask for my license or anything.   But they’ll be looking for you, won’t they?”
    “I don’t know.   I got this van and I just don’t know.”
    “Where’d you get it?”
    “Jesus, you ask a lot of questions.”
    “I know.   You stole a van?”
    He took one arm off his knee and touched his forehead a moment.   “I was thinking I could get another car.   I don’t want to but maybe I could do that just to get across in something they might not be looking for.”   He got up off the cot.   “I don’t know.   I got to lie down, I think.”
    I’ll get you a key, and I’ll call your room in a few hours.”   She stood up.   “This is so strange.”
    He was closing the lid to the pizza box, tucking in the side flaps.   He wouldn’t look up.   There were grease stains on the cardboard and he traced one with his finger.   “No, it’s not,” he said finally.   “Not really.   This is just like I thought it would be, and it’s just like you said in your letter.   We’re the same.   We haven’t changed.   All that stuff that happened didn’t happen.”
    She stood there a moment longer, watching his hand.   For a moment she thought she would cry, but then he turned to her.
    “You really believe that, right?” he asked.
    She pressed her lips together and tried to hold on, but the tears were there and she could feel them.   Releasing all the air from her lungs, she whispered, “I do.   I really believe that.”

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
    Seven

 
 
    Warren became aware of bright light coming from behind him and, opening his eyes, he squinted against headlights reflected in the rearview mirror.
      Leah was sitting up, brushing the hair out of her face.   “The fuck is this, cops?”
    “I don’t know.”   The lights were right behind his truck.   He checked his side view mirror but he all he could see was glare.   He looked at the motel office a moment, then put his car in gear and pulled out into the snowy street.   The headlights stayed right behind him.   He drove slowly through town toward Bobby’s house.   After a couple of blocks, he said, “It’s not the cops.”
    “Who is it?”   She was tucking her blouse into her jeans.
    “A couple of kids in a Camaro, I’ll bet.   Buck and Pete.”
    “Pete, the wrestler?”
    “Yeah.”
    “That kid, Jesus,” she said.   “Last fall he got in a fight with some guy, a hunter from downstate, right in the parking lot behind Sally’s Pub.   Took three guys to pull him off.   I mean that guy should be on Wrestlemania.”

 
    •

 
    Noel gave him the key to room 12 because the heat was on and it was around back.   Norman went outside and drove the van behind the motel, and suddenly the motel office seemed inordinately empty and quiet.   The only sound was the ticking noise coming from the baseboard radiators.   She sat at the counter and tried to finish the article about the mastodon, but she kept staring up at her reflection