Fully Loaded - Blake Crouch [32]
Jessica vomits on the floor, and Ron feels the urge as well, his mouth watering heavily.
He helps his wife to stand and they back away from the table, Ron wondering what might be lurking in the pearl-colored clam sauce of the dish he already took two bites from, decides not to even contemplate it.
Jessica trembles, tears streaming down her face.
“Calm down, baby. Let me look.” In the lowlight, he sees that one of the hooks has barely lodged. “I can get this one out right now.”
Delicately, with surgeon’s hands, he works the hook out of the corner of her lip.
“This other one’s really embedded. I think the barb’s under the skin.”
“My tongue,” she cries.
“Let me see.”
She sticks it out, and even in the poor light, Ron can see the deep slice halfway up the right side of her tongue.
“Jesus, it’s bad. Do you think you swallowed any glass?”
“I don’t know.”
“All right, stay here.”
“Where are you going?”
“To hurt somebody.”
“No, wait.” Her mouth has already begun to swell, blunting the sharpness of her consonants.
“Why?”
“Let’s just go find the sheriff.”
“No, fuck that.”
Ron rushes toward the back of the restaurant, his fists already clenched as he kicks open the metal doors.
The kitchen stands dark.
He says, “Anybody in here?”
-12-
They arrive at the front desk of the Lone Cone Inn, find the same stodgy clerk who they spoke with earlier in the day leaning back in a swivel chair, engrossed in a paperback romance.
“Excuse me?” Ron says, the clerk startling.
“Yes?”
“Where’s the hospital?” He gestures to Jessica, holding a burgundy cloth napkin over her mouth. “My wife needs medical attention.”
“I’m sorry, we only have a clinic, and it’s closed.”
“No hospital?”
“Nearest one’s thirty miles away, and as you know, the passes are closed tonight.”
“Okay, how about a sheriff?”
“Yes, but I’m sure his office is closed as well. It’s almost nine.”
“What’s your name?”
“Carol.”
“Tell me, Carol, what do the residents of this town do when they need an officer of the fucking peace?”
“Did something happen?”
“Yeah, something happened.”
“I guess I could try Sheriff Hanson at his home.”
“Really? I mean, I don’t want to put you out or anything just ‘cause someone put glass and hooks and roaches in my wife’s fucking dinner and almost cut her tongue in—”
“It’s not her fault, Ron.”
Carol lifts the phone, dials a number, after a moment, says, “Arthur? Hey it’s Carol. I’ve got the couple from out-of-town standing here at my desk, and I think they need your help…I don’t know…yeah, I think so…okay.”
She hangs up the phone.
“He’s coming down.”
“Thank you,” Ron says. “Now we were hoping you might have some other good news for us.”
“Like what?”
“We’ve had a really rough evening, and we need a…”
She shakes her head. “I’m sorry, we’re booked.”
“I’ll pay double. Triple. I don’t—”
“Sir, what do you want me to do? Kick someone out? I’m sorry, there’s no vacancy.”
-13-
They sit in the leather sofa by the fireplace, Ron holding Jessica, running his fingers through her hair, thinking they should be sitting in this lobby under completely different circumstances, cuddling by the fire with glasses of wine, musing on what the future has in store. In those rare moments when his mind cleared of all the things he needed to do, he’d come close to admitting to himself that despite all the money he and Jessica were accumulating, they were sacrificing the primes of their lives—him for the superrich and the ultra-shallow, that elite class who could drop seventy-grand to buff a few dents out of their noses, Jessica for faceless pharmaceutical companies in pursuit of the next billion-dollar drug. Between the ninety-hour workweeks and all the Saturdays in the office, even in those fleeting idle moments, he had to remind himself to look around and enjoy what he had, to tell himself how good he had it—the Lotus, the collection of ancient single malts, the four point two million dollar view