I looked into the gray eyes and, like Grassman, I hesitated too long. She slammed the car door and went to the house without looking back. Saturday night was no longer a nice thing to think about. Somehow, through impulsiveness and through awkwardness, I had trapped myself. I felt as if I had lost a great deal more than a Saturday night date. She was not a girl you could lie to. She was not a girl you would want to lie to. My little cover story now seemed soiled and dingy. I drove into town. I started my drinking at the Hillston Inn.
Before I left the Inn I cashed two traveler's checks. I hit a great many bars. It was Saturday night. The city seemed alive. I can remember seeing the dwarf bartender. There was a woman I bought drinks for. At one time I was in a men's room and four of us were singing. The door was locked and somebody was pounding on it. We were making fine music. I was sick in a hedge and I couldn't find my car. I wandered a long time before I found it. I don't know what time it was. It was late. I had to keep one eye closed as I drove cautiously out to the motel. Otherwise the center line was double.
I parked the car in front of my motel room and went, unwashed, to bed. Sunday was a replica, a sodden day in town, a drunken day.
It was eleven when I got up on Monday morning. A half dozen glasses of water made me feel bloated but didn't quench my thirst. My head pounded in a dull, ragged rhythm. I shaved slowly, painfully. The shower made me feel a little better. I decided that it was time to go. Time to leave this place. I didn't know where I would head for. Any place. Any kind of a job. Some kind of manual labor. Get too bushed to think.
I packed my two bags. I left them inside the door and went out to unlock the trunk. All the transient cars were gone. A big dog stood with his feet against the side of my car, looking in the side window. The cold, thin, birdlike woman was carrying sheets and towels out of one of the other rooms and dumping them into a hamper on wheels.
The dog jumped back as I walked out. He stood twenty feet away and whined in a funny way. I made as though to throw gravel at him and he went farther back. I didn't know what attracted him to my car.
I happened to glance inside as I was heading to unlock the trunk. I stopped and looked for a long time. It seemed an effort to take my eyes away. A big body was on the floor in the back, legs bent, head tilted sideways. It was Milton Grassman. He still wore the brown suit. The knees showed traces of pale dried mud. The forehead, in the area where the thin hairline had started, was broken jelly, an ugly, sickening depression. No man could have lived more than a moment with a wound like that.
I realized the woman was calling to me in her thin voice.
I turned and said, "What?"
"I said are you staying another day?"