“Isn’t that touching?” Clete said. “Get the pun?” He shook his head up and down.
Idiot, Margaret thought.
*
As soon as Clete locked them in, Henry took Margaret into the bathroom. The whirlpool machine was gone.
“Where’d they take you?” she asked.
Quickly, Henry turned on the cold tap full force.
“I’m not allowed to tell you.”
“What do you mean not allowed?”
“It was awful.”
“Do you hurt?” she asked.
Henry nodded.
“Where?”
He had to laugh. “Everywhere.”
“Want me to massage you?”
Margaret’s hands were expert at massage. He shook his head.
Not in front of that camera.
“I don’t know how much time we’ll have. We’ve got to find a way to shake off Clete for a few minutes while we’re in the dining room. We have both got to head for the rest rooms.”
Margaret nodded.
“Once we’re out of sight of the main dining room, we’ll both go into the ladies’ room. The window there is concealed by shrubs. I’ve checked it out. The shrubs go all the way to the edge of the woods. It’s on the wrong side for the highway, but we can circle around as we descend. Forget everything except getting ourselves out. I’ve got a way, I think, of making it impossible for anyone to open the door of the bathroom from the outside once we’re in. It’ll take them time to figure that out, and time is what we need.”
“Suppose there’s another woman in there?”
“Let’s worry about that when we come to it.”
“I thought you always say to plan ahead.”
“You’re right, but listen, Margaret. There are two important things to remember right now. We don’t want Clete’s suspicions roused. We need to make it seem as if we’re adjusting to being here.”
“I will try to be a good actress.”
“And second, Margaret, we both need to get as much rest as possible. Let’s try to sleep. We’ll need every ounce of energy tomorrow.”
*
When Clete came to get them for dinner, Margaret told him she’d caught a bit of a chill so that he wouldn’t wonder about her heavy slacks and sweater. He acted as if hadn’t heard her.
As they followed along behind Clete on the way to the dining room, Margaret whispered to Henry, “Clete seems upset about something.”
After they were seated, Henry said, “Clete, is something wrong?”
Clete shrugged his shoulders.
Henry, who could have an avuncular way with younger people, wondered if he could draw him out. The more Clete talked, the better Henry’s chances of finding the opening he was looking for.
“Girl problem?”
Clete looked at Henry suspiciously.
“How’d you know?”
“Oh I didn’t,” Henry said. “Just guessed something very commonplace.”
“Well, this isn’t commonplace. My girl…”
He stopped. Nothing wrong with telling them. “While you two were resting,” Clete said, “I thought I’d check in with Charlotte. She’s my girl. Terrific girl. I couldn’t get her on the phone, so I went to her room and found a note that she’s taken off for San Diego. In my car.”
“Anything the matter?” Henry asked, leading him on.
“You kidding? They’ll never let her get down there. She’s not due for leave till April. We aren’t allowed to take vacations together. Mr. Clifford thinks it encourages loyalties that supersede Cliffhaven if employees are away from Cliffhaven together, and…” He seemed reluctant to say more.
“Yes?” Henry asked.
“Well, Jesus, she left a note for Mr. Whittaker, he’s the manager, saying she got a call her father died. What shit! Her father’s been dead for years. She used to have a boy friend in San Diego. I’ll bet he got through to her.”
“Why don’t you go after her?” Henry asked.
“I’m supposed to be watching you, right? Oh they’ll bring her back, she didn’t have much of a head start, but if they put her in detention, that won’t do me much good, will it? They’ll have to have their asshole investigation. They’re always afraid some employee will get bribed by some bigass Jew to rat on Cliffhaven, something like that.”
“Do you think Charlotte would do that?”
“No way.” Clete glanced about the dining room. “They investigate you pretty thoroughly before you get a job at Cliffhaven. Besides, once you’re in, you’re in, know what I mean?”
“No, I don’t,” Henry said.
“This isn’t like any other job. You can’t just take
off.”
“You mean the people who work here are prisoners, too?”
“Now don’t get me sore.”
“I didn’t mean to, Clete.”
“Guests don’t get to get away the way Charlotte did. Hey!”
Clete was standing. Henry and Margaret turned to see what had caught his eye.
She was a striking-looking young woman, nearly six feet tall, with shoulder-length blond hair, and very tan. She was not in uniform.
“Charlotte?” Henry asked, but Clete was already off
in
her direction.
Henry could see them talking animatedly. It was then Henry saw that she was in the company of two older men he hadn’t seen before. Had she been apprehended? Clete seemed to be arguing with the men. Then each of them took the tall blonde by an arm and escorted her out of the building, Clete following them.
“What was that all about?” Margaret asked.
“Never mind,” Henry said. “It’s our chance. Let’s go.”
He got up.
“You go first,” he said to her. “The ladies’ room.”
Margaret seemed nervous. He watched her leave, then slipped a fork off the table into his pocket.
The maître d’ looked his way as he turned the corner toward the washrooms. Margaret had just gone into the ladies’ room. Henry followed.
The minute he was inside, he saw Margaret trying to calm an older woman who’d just come out of one of the cubicles.
“I’ll need your help,” he said to Margaret and showed her how to twine her fingers to make a step.
“I’m going to step up on your hands,” he said. “Try to hold me up there if you can.”
“I’ll try,” she said.
Henry heaved himself up.
“I can’t hold you long like that,” Margaret said.
“Try!” Henry pleaded, jamming the fork into the space behind the pneumatic mechanism that closed the door. He shoved it hard, hoping it would work.
He jumped down.
“They won’t be able to open the door,” he said.
“I want to get out of here,” the older woman said.
“Please just wait a minute,” Henry said. “Please.” He unlatched the bathroom window and opened it from the bottom. The bushes outside provided perfect concealment.
“What are you doing?” the woman said. “You can’t escape.”
“Please give us a chance,” Henry said. “Or do you want to come with us?”
“You’re newcomers. You don’t know.”
He could hear someone trying the door.
“Now,” he said to Margaret and held twined hands for her just as she had for him. She got out of the window. He marveled at her agility.
Henry hoped his forearms were still strong enough. He hoisted himself up on the sill and flopped forward, pulling his body along, then dropped over the other side.
“This way,” he said to Margaret.
In two minutes they were in the woods, which dropped down at a marked angle. The redwoods provided no grip for hands, but the small seedlings everywhere enabled them to hold on as they stumbled forward.
Henry looked up at the moonlit sky to check his direction. The thick stands of tall trees let very little light onto the forest floor, covered with many years’ accumulation of slippery leaves.
“We’ve got to wend our way there,” Henry said, pointing. “Toward the highway and the ocean.” He was grateful for the distant boom of the ocean pounding the rocks.
After a while Margaret gasped, “How far have we come?”
“Not far enough. Are you okay?”
She nodded, and they were off again.
“My hands are all scratched,” she said.
“Mine, too. Sorry.”
He didn’t hear sounds of pursuit. If they couldn’t get the bathroom door open because of the fork he’d jammed into the mechanism, they’d have gone around the window side of the building by now.
“I think we’d better move faster,” Henry said.
“I’m going as fast as I can.”
It was like running in a nightmare, you couldn’t go fast enough. At times it seemed as if the floor of the forest descended at an acute angle to the sea, as much in a hurry to get there as they were. Henry tried to find the gentler slopes, wondering if any human beings had ever come this way before. If one was escaping alone and tripped, perhaps broke a leg, could one drag oneself out? Not likely, not through this underbrush. One would have to cry for help. Would anyone hear? What if they had stopped looking?
“Be careful,” he said to Margaret
Henry heard the sounds of himself plunging through the brush and behind him the reassuring sound that Margaret was behind him. It was like a marathon, you had to keep going, keep going. How much longer would it take?
Out of breath, he stopped a moment. Margaret caught up. When she stopped, he listened. They could actually hear the sounds of the highway now. It couldn’t be far. His heart rose high with hope.
“Just a few minutes more,” he said.
“I can’t,” Margaret said. “I’m exhausted. Go on ahead.”
“No.” It was absolute. He took her hand and they were off again.
“Don’t try to hold on to me. I’m coming,” Margaret said. “I’ll be all right.”
Henry guessed they were now within a hundred yards of the road. The forest was thinning. He wanted to run, but the thought of losing Margaret kept him in check. Suddenly, he could see a slope bathed in moonlight. They were nearly out of the woods.
They stopped, their chests heaving. Henry was listening for the yapping of dogs. “Let’s run across the clearing,” he said. “Now.”
The grass was knee high. He had to lift his legs running. He could hear Margaret stumbling along behind him. Suddenly, they were on the unpaved road. He could see the sentry box and beyond it, the highway. He hoped nobody was in the sentry box this time of night. Running on the road was easier. He waved at Margaret to hurry.
He made out the chain across the road at the entranceway. On the other side of the chain stood six of the guests of Cliffhaven, each with a club in his hand. Had they made a break for it at the same time he had? Why were they just standing there? He stopped ten feet away from them, as Margaret caught up. Their faces, some of them, were familiar.
They were people from the trusty table in the dining room, wearing their armbands. One man stepped forward to the chain. He was about Henry’s age. “You’ll have to go back,” he said.
“Never,” Henry said.
All six of them were now holding their sticks in readiness.
“Please,” Henry said.
“They will take revenge on others if we let you go,” the leader said. “You must return.”
“No,” Henry said.
“Go back peacefully,” the leader insisted. “It is better for all of us.”
Just then Henry heard the car swing off the highway. It spun around toward where they were all standing and came to a noisy stop on the gravel. Henry couldn’t believe his luck. It was a California State Highway Patrol car.
The trooper got out of the car.
“Thank heaven,” Margaret said.
The trooper looked at the trusties and then at them. The trusties all nodded at the trooper, as if in recognition. Their leader said, “This is Mr. and Mrs. Brown. They were trying to leave Cliffhaven.”
Henry stretched his arms out to the trooper. “They’re keeping more than a hundred people prisoner up there! Please radio for help.”
The trooper strode over to Henry.
Henry dropped his arms to his sides.
“All right,” the leader of the trusties said to Henry and Margaret, “come along.”
“What do you mean?” Henry said. “This policeman can help us all get away.”
“You,” the trooper said to Henry. “You do what they say, kike.”
PART 2
10
Rupert Fowler was born on his family farm in Oklahoma in time to be twenty-four in 1931. He was a broad-shouldered, restless loner of a youth who knew more about cars than country doctors did about the human body. The farming folk thought him ingenious, called on him rather than the service station in town to patch up their ailing vehicles, paid him in a lot of compliments and some cash, which he turned over to his father after deducting a tithe for himself. His father, an embittered man, told Rupert they were a farm family not a car-fixing family, and Rupert should stop wasting time on contraptions that got you from home to another place it probably wasn’t worth going to.
When cantankerous Mr. Morton refused to pay Rupert promptly for a tune-up on a Model T that Rupert had nursed through every sickness an old car is prone to, Rupert decided that the car was more his than Mr. Morton’s. In it he fled the family farm with one bundle of clothes and enough scrimped cash to keep him in vittles and gasoline until he reached the Los Angeles area.