Stay by Nicola Griffith Read Free Book Online Page B

into the box over his coffee. “Eggs. Green peppers. Seems like an odd choice to eat on the road.”
    “This is for you to take with you. No point it all going to waste.”
    “You expect to be gone a while, then?”
    “A few days. I’ll call, when I find her. That’s all you need to know. Now drink your coffee and load your car. I want to leave before seven.”
    I wiped down the inside of the fridge and propped the door open, shut down the appliances one by one, turned off the propane and water lines, checked locks, latches, and bolts on the cabin, hogpen, and trailer, put my bag and phone in the truck. The light in the clearing was like cool green tea, and dozens of birds sang. Dornan leaned against his Isuzu, sipping coffee and looking forlorn.
    “Got everything?”
    He nodded.
    “Then I’ll call you in a few days.”
    He nodded again, turned and slid into his seat, put his coffee in the cup holder and the key in the ignition, but didn’t shut the door. “Which way are you heading?”
    “Go home, Dornan. Go home and take care of your business. Don’t come back here. I’ll call you.”
    I stood there for a long time after he bumped his way over the turf and down the track, until the smell of his exhaust had faded into the trees and soil, and I could hear nothing but the birds. The air smelled like rain.
    By seven-thirty I was on I-26 heading north and west for Tennessee. If I ignored the weather, ignored the scenery, and just drove, I could hold the clearing in my mind; I could imagine the soft patter of rain on the leaves—a flatter sound, now that the leaves were drier and getting ready to fall—building to a harsh rattling, the gush of rain runneling over the rich forest loam. In my truck, I could pretend I was not heading for a place hard with machine hum and concrete and seething with people who stank of fear and need. Once on I-81 I crossed Tennessee and Virginia at a steady seventy-five miles an hour, tires thrumming rhythmically over the concrete and whining on the asphalt, stopping only to refill the truck’s huge twin tanks. At about one in the afternoon, just before Roanoke, I took a twenty-minute break to eat, drink, and use the bathroom. I didn’t stop again until seven in the evening, not far outside Harrisburg. Both times I chose seedy, ill-lit fast food shacks where the colors would be dim and the noise low—no children screaming and running up and down, no canned music—and I wouldn’t have to smile or talk. In the rest room I didn’t look in the mirror. When I got back into the truck near Harrisburg, the wind was blowing pewter clouds into an already darkening sky.
    “It won’t work,” Julia said.
    “What won’t?”
    “Pretending. The world’s out there. You have to move through it at some point.”
    I changed gears unnecessarily and didn’t reply.
    “And why do you need a truck in New York?”
    She gave me that smug smile she always used when she was being Socratic, and disappeared.
    Rain hissed against my windscreen, washing it to silver and mercury. I hadn’t thought further than the fact that I didn’t want to fly. The truck was familiar, a piece of my refuge. I should have rented a car in Asheville.
    I drove grimly through the rain. Pennsylvania became New Jersey. I took the Newark Airport exit, and the streaming windscreen yellowed to cadmium and sodium as I approached the long-term parking lot, which turned out to be full of cars but empty of people. The rain was steady, and when I looked up as I got out of the truck, falling drops seemed to stretch and streak until they were golden needles. It seemed I had not thought to bring a coat.
    The shuttle bus was driven by a woman with drooping eyelids and swollen knuckles. One of the pair of doors wouldn’t open fully; I had to hold my bag in front of me to squeeze through. The driver watched noncommittally. “Which airline?” Jamaican accent.
    “American.” It made no difference. The bus jerked into motion.
    Inside it