He opened the door and watched Verdi stalk around the
end of the house. "No. You're better off, here." He turned out the
lights and drove down the hill. "So long," he said.
A band of gray was lightening in the east. The wind was still blowing
through his chest but without the angriest gusts. He thought of
stopping at Becky's in Portland, but he couldn't face leaving another
familiar place. It was better to drive. Drive where? South. That's
where people go when they leave Maine. Down the turnpike. He pulled off
at the first rest stop and nodded at a trucker who was walking back to
the parking lot. Take a leak, a cup of coffee. Go.
23.
Oliver stopped for breakfast in Chelmsford and then made it south of
Worcester before his adrenaline burned down. Massive numbness lay ahead
like a fog bank. Stop, he told himself. He found a motel and asked for
a room. "Sure thing," the desk clerk said. "That'll be six hundred
bucks."
"What!"
"April Fool." The clerk fell over the counter, laughing.
"That's me," Oliver said.
He slept all afternoon, ate at a Burger King across the road, watched
the news, and fell asleep again without ever really waking up.
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