Fully Loaded - Blake Crouch [43]
Ron opens the door, climbs down out of the enormous truck.
As he turns back to close the door, the old man reaches across the seat and slams it shut himself.
The truck’s knobby tires squeal as it roars away from the hospital.
-37-
Ron stands once more on the corner of Main and 3rd.
He squeezes his wife’s hand, says, “I’m gonna go in here for a minute.”
“I’ll walk down to Starbucks. You’ll come meet me?”
It feels good stepping out of the maddening August heat and into the theatre—a hundred and fifty-two years old according to the plaque on the brick beside the entrance.
Ron passes through the lobby, through the archway, and climbs two flights of stairs on his tired legs.
He doubts he’s plopped himself down in the same seat he occupied that night, but the view down onto the stage looks exactly like the dreams that still plague him.
Below, a janitor emerges from underneath the balcony, pushing a mop bucket down the center aisle.
-38-
“Excuse me, sir?”
The janitor looks up from his mop bucket, says, “You’re not supposed to be in here.”
“The door was unlocked.”
As Ron arrives at the base of the stage, the janitor’s eyes fall on what remains of Ron’s left hand—everything lost to frostbite but the thumb.
Ron places the janitor around seventy, the man small and wiry. He asks, “How long have you lived here, sir?”
“Forty-five years next month.”
“No kidding.”
“Look, I gotta finish up here.”
“Could I just ask you one little favor?”
“What’s that?”
Ron’s heart pounds under his Hawaiian shirt, his mouth gone dry.
“I want to see the golden bear.”
“What the hell are you talking—”
“The brazen bear you bring out every winter solstice.”
The janitor smiles and shakes his head, leans against the mop handle. “You’re one of those people, huh?”
“What people?”
“Once or twice a year, some conspiracy freak comes along asking about the winter solstice celebration, and didn’t this town used to—”
“I’m not asking, and I’m not a kook. I was here, sir, twenty-nine years ago, December twenty-second, Twenty-Aught-Four.”
“You must be con—”
“I watched from the balcony while you roasted my wife inside the golden bear.”
For a moment, the theatre stands so quiet, Ron can hear the murmur of traffic out on Main, the janitor staring him down with an oblique combination of anger and fear.
Ron says, “I didn’t come here to hurt any—”
“I told you. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I think you—”
“And I got work to do.”
The janitor turns away and pushes his mop bucket toward the far right aisle that in Ron’s dreams are always lined with white-masked executioners.
-39-
He walks slowly down the sidewalk among the throng of tourists, sweating again after half a block.
The waterfall has dried up, and the sky, so blue and pure all those years ago when he and Jessica first came to town, has faded into a pale and dirty white.
Main Street looks the same, although the two lanes have been divided into four to accommodate the tiny vehicles, and there are traffic lights and automated pedestrian crosswalks now at every intersection. Some of the older buildings have been demolished, but most remain to be dwarfed beneath the five- and six-story apartment buildings.
The “Welcome to Lone Cone” sign boasts a population of just under nine thousand.
Ron glances at the hillsides above town, overridden with condos and trophy homes.
Above them all, a Wal-Mart sits perched on a manmade plateau, and behind it the immense gray peaks stand snowless under the brutal summer sun.
-40-
Ron waits twenty minutes in line for a cup of dark roast, then joins his wife at a table near the window.
“How’s your latte?” he asks.
“Delicious.”
Starbucks world music trickles through speakers in the ceiling like a slow-drip IV.
“Could we spend the night here, Ron? It’s so beautiful—”
“I’d rather not.”
She reaches across the table, holds his hand.
“When we leave here, do you want to show me where you stumbled out of the mountains? Maybe we could stop on the side of the road, say a few words for Jessica?”
“Sure, we could