Body Rides (27 page)

At this point, I don’t know where I’ll be heading. Somewhere out of town, where I can relax and not have to worry about either the police or Rasp.

I probably won’t get in touch with you. The less you know, the better.

I’m awfully sorry for dragging you into my mess. I would’ve kept it all to myself, but I cared too much for you, and couldn’t lie.

I love you, Marta. I’ll be thinking about you, and missing you. Again, please don’t worry. I’ll be a lot safer, hiding out. And I won’t stay away any longer than I have to.

Adios
for now.

All my love,

After signing the letter, Neal slipped its bottom edge into the rear of the typewriter’s roller so that the sheet stood upright.

Then he picked up his bag, turned off the lights in Marta’s apartment, and left. He went out to his car. He needed to return to his own apartment and pack a few things before taking off for anywhere.

Where
should
I go? he wondered as he started to drive.

To a motel or hotel.
Outside
of Los Angeles, since he didn’t want to run a risk of bumping into anyone he knew. Outside Southern California, for that matter. Why take chances? It’s a small world. Try hanging out at the Disneyland Hotel, for instance, and he very well might run into someone he knew. San Diego seemed a little risky, too.

Too bad Disneyland isn’t a few hundred miles from here, he thought.

There’s always Disney World.

But that seemed
too
far away. Besides, he’d heard that Florida could be awful in summer: terrible heat, humidity so bad that you’re never dry, and mosquitos.

He liked the idea of going somewhere with an amusement park, though. If he had to run off and hide, why not make the best of it? Treat it as a holiday.

He liked
amusement parks.

Couldn’t get enough of them.

Disneyland and Disney World were great places; friendly and pleasant and fun and non-threatening, and full of cuteness.

Knott’s Berry Farm had some reality going for it. In addition to having plenty of rides and nifty shops, there were real horses, real museums full of old-west artifacts, and live performers doing gunfights in the streets.

Magic Mountain didn’t have much to offer except thrill rides. It was also a favorite hangout for gang types. Neal wouldn’t like to spend much time there.

Besides, Disneyland, Knott’s and Magic Mountain were all too close to home.

He needed to go at least a couple of hundred miles.

The Santa Cruz Boardwalk was a possibility. Neal had been born too late for such grand old parks as the Long Beach Pike and Pacific Ocean Park in Venice, but the Santa Cruz Boardwalk still survived. It was one of Neal’s favorite places. He’d been there five times, over the years.

How about it? he wondered.

Not a good idea. He’d taken Marta there.

That’ll be the first place she thinks of, if she tries to figure out where I’ve gone.

So how about Funland? he wondered.

Funland, in Boleta Bay, was a lot like Santa Cruz. A boardwalk amusement park on the beach – old, tacky, creepy.

Maybe too creepy.

A few years ago, a bunch of people had gotten killed there. Something to do with an abandoned funhouse. Indigents had gotten into it and turned it into some sort of torture chamber, or obstacle
course. Grabbed people off the beach and sent them through. That sort of thing.

Neal had been to Funland
before
all that. And he’d found it too spooky for his taste, even then. Take the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, age it and run it down, fill it with carny types who looked like they might want to cut your throat, load the crowd with outlaw bikers and loving couples like Starkweather and Fugate, and there you’ve got Funland.

Not to mention the
freak show
.

Not actually a freak show, he reminded himself. Weird stuff.

Jasper’s Oddities
. That’s it.

‘Shit,’ he muttered.

He
still
sometimes had nightmares about what he’d seen in there.

‘Forget Funland,’ he said.

What’s left? he wondered.

He’d heard of a place called the Fort, over in Nevada. It was supposed to be an amusement park with an old-west theme. He’d never been there, he didn’t think he’d ever talked to Marta about it, and it was probably four or five hundred miles from Los Angeles. Just about the right distance. Though near enough to reach with a full day of driving, it probably didn’t draw huge crowds from Southern California.

From what he’d heard, the Fort didn’t draw huge crowds from anywhere.

It had opened a few years ago with a lot of fanfare. But it hadn’t caught on.

Hope it hasn’t shut down, he thought.

Last he’d heard, it had still been up and running.

Give the place a try, he decided.

Neal felt excited about the trip. But he grew nervous as he turned into the alley that ran behind his apartment building and Karen’s.

No cop cars, thank God
.

Karen probably hadn’t called the police, fearing that Neal might tell them about her relationship with Darren.

Must be terrified somebody’ll find out
.

Though the alley looked all right, Neal drove slowly, searching the area beyond his headlights.

He saw nobody. No Creeper, no bums, no Rasputin.

No Karen.

I’m gonna have to move, he told himself. Can’t go on living here.

But a final decision about that could wait. For now, he just wanted to put some miles behind him.

He swung into his parking space and shut down his car, then wondered if he should use the bracelet for a quick scouting expedition through his apartment.

And what, leave my body here?

Not a great idea, he thought.

He could feel the weight of the pistol against his thigh.

Hope the bastard
is
up there waiting for me.

Sure I do
.

Nervous, he climbed out of his car and walked quickly. He looked all around as he hurried through the rear gate and up the stairs to the balcony. Everything looked okay. In front of his own door, he took the pistol out of his pocket. He held it ready in his right hand, finger against the trigger guard, while he used his left hand to unlock and open the door.

Inside, he flicked a light switch. A lamp came on. The living room looked okay, so he shut the door.

Then he walked through every room, gun in hand.

Nobody.

We’re in business
.

It took Neal half an hour to pack, and another ten minutes to study road maps. After figuring out how to reach the Fort, he tucked his maps under one arm and carried a single, heavy suitcase down to his car. He tossed the suitcase into the trunk, climbed into the driver’s seat, and took off.

He drove through backstreets, taking much the same route he’d used Sunday night on his way to Video City. Robertson would’ve been faster, but the boulevard seemed more dangerous to Neal than the hidden roads that twisted through this quiet residential neighborhood.

He didn’t want to encounter a car full of trigger-happy gangsters.

And he wanted to know if he was being followed.

No headlights showed in his rearview mirror. But he supposed Rasputin might be tailing him without headlights, so he made several random turns. A few times, he even swung over to the curb, shut off his lights and engine, and waited.

Nothing went by.

At last, he sped up the on-ramp to the Santa Monica Freeway, fairly certain that he wasn’t being followed. He headed west for only a couple of minutes before starting north on the 405 Freeway. The traffic was light and there would be no more turns for about half an hour, so he took a deep breath and tried to relax.

He felt as if he were starting off on a holiday trip – but also as if he were a fugitive on his way to a hideout.

Which is it? he wondered.

Both?

The two feelings seemed to conflict with each other, yet they each held a place in him.

He’d seen such things in the people he’d entered with the bracelet: they were packed with contradictions.

Maybe we all are, he thought.

Maybe not
.

Neal himself seemed to have conflicting emotions and thoughts about nearly everything.

At least about the big stuff, he told himself. Like making this trip.

Leaving Marta . . .

He
really
hated to leave Marta behind.

On the other hand, there was a certain sense of freedom in the prospect of being far away from her.

He found himself daydreaming about their reunion.

He imagined entering her apartment after being gone for a week or two. She was wearing a T-shirt and nothing else – the same as Karen. She rushed into his arms and embraced him. ‘
Oh, God, Neal, I was so worried about you
.’ And he said, ‘
I missed you so much, Marta
’ And he slipped his hands under the hanging back of her shirt and curled his fingers over her buttocks. He felt their cool smoothness.

This is one of those mind-movies, he realized. Just like Karen had about Darren.

He supposed he’d always experienced such things.

The mind-movies, various internal conversations, the vague and wordless notions floating around in his head, plus a constant general awareness of his physical sensations and surroundings – they’d been part of his life all along, but he’d never paid any particular attention to them. They’d simply been the mixture of thoughts and feelings that lived inside him. He’d taken them for granted, never analyzed them.

Not until the bracelet came along.

He sure hoped his new awareness of the processes wouldn’t end up intruding too much on his own mind.

Like the way it just screwed up my nice little reunion with Marta
. . .

He focused on where he’d left off in the fantasy.

They’d been embracing, relieved and happy about being together again, and he’d been going up underneath the back of her T-shirt, exploring her smooth bare skin.

He was there again, thinking about it as he drove north through the San Fernando Valley.

The back of her T-shirt lifted as his hands roamed higher. Soon, her buttocks were bare. In front, the shirt climbed above her waist.

He caressed the tops of her shoulders, then slipped a hand down her back and around her hip and down to the moist, warm cleft between her legs. He slipped a finger into her. She gasped and stiffened, the way she did in real life when he touched her that way.

Must feel awfully good for her, he thought.

Easy to find out. Just pay her a little visit with the bracelet sometime
.

No way, he told himself. Tough to look her in the face again if I’d snuck inside and spied on her.

Besides, I couldn’t do it to her, even if I wanted to. I can’t be in her
and
touching her.

He wondered, though. There were probably ways . . .

Don’t even think about it
.

All else aside, Neal realized that he might find out things that he didn’t want to know. Elise had been clear in her warnings about that: stay out of relatives, close friends and lovers.

An awfully good way to find out where you stand, though, he
thought. If there’s a problem, better to find out about it before you get any more committed to her.

It’d be such a dirty trick
.

He was opposed to doing it, but excited by the idea.

Bad enough, invading a total stranger like that
.

He planned to invade plenty of those, as soon as he reached the Fort.

He could hardly wait.

You’ll have to wait, he told himself. No way to go bracelet-hitching on the freeway.

Unless I pull over
.

Which didn’t seem like a great idea.

Just hold your horses, he thought. Wait till you’re inside a nice, safe hotel room.

Just after dawn, with the sun in his eyes, Neal stopped for breakfast at Sunny’s Café in the town of Mojave. Before leaving his car, he removed the pistol from his pocket and slipped off the bracelet. He stashed the gun in the glove compartment. He shoved the bracelet into the right front pocket of his trousers. Then he climbed out, stretched, and walked across the gravel parking lot to the restaurant entrance.