Gary opens the car door, gets into the passenger seat, and slams the door shut. His hair and his clothes are damp, and the bucket of chicken he has with him is steamy hot and smells like oil.
“I thought it was you,” he says.
He needs to fold his legs up to fit in this car; he balances the bucket of chicken on his lap.
“It was Jimmy’s ring,” Sally says.
She didn’t plan to spill it immediately, but maybe it’s just as well. She’s staring at Gary for his reaction, but he’s simply looking back at her. God, she wishes she smoked or drank or something. The tension is so bad that it feels as though it were at least a hundred and thirty degrees inside the car. Sally is surprised she doesn’t just burst into flame.
“Well?” she says finally. “We were lying to you. That ring in my kitchen belonged to James Hawkins.”
“I know.” Gary sounds even more worried now than before. She’s the one, and he knows it. Under certain circumstances, he might be willing to give up everything for Sally Owens. He might be willing to leap headlong into this ravine he feels coming up, without considering how fast he’d be falling or how brutal the moment of impact might be. Gary combs his wet hair back with his fingers and, for a moment, the whole car smells like rain. “Have you had dinner?” He lifts the bucket of chicken. He’s also got onion rings and fries.
“I couldn’t eat,” Sally tells him.
Gary opens the door and sets the bucket outside in the rain. He has definitely lost his appetite for chicken.
“I might pass out,” Sally warns him. “I feel like I’m going to have a stroke.”
“Is that because you understand I have to ask if you or your sister know where Hawkins is?”
That is not the reason. Sally is hot right down to her fingertips. She takes her hands off the steering wheel so steam doesn’t rise from beneath her cuticles, and places both hands in her lap. “I’ll tell you where he is.” Gary Hallet is looking at her as if the Hide-A-Way Motel and all the rest of the Turnpike didn’t even exist. “Dead,” Sally says.
Gary thinks this over while the rain taps against the roof of the car. They can’t see out the windshield, and the windows are fogged up.
“It was an accident,” Sally says now. “Not that he didn’t deserve it. Not that he wasn’t the biggest pig alive.”
“He went to my high school.” Gary speaks slowly, with an ache in his voice. “He was always bad news. People say that he shot twelve ponies at a ranch that refused to hire him for a summer job. Shot them in the head, one by one.”
“There you go,” Sally says. “There you have it.”
“You want me to forget about him? Is that what you’re asking me to do?”
“He won’t hurt anyone anymore,” Sally says. “That’s the important thing.”
The woman who works in the motel office has run outside, wearing a black rain poncho and carrying a broom she’ll use to try to unclog the gutters before tomorrow’s predicted storm. Sally herself isn’t thinking about her gutters. She’s not wondering if her girls thought to close the windows, and at this moment she doesn’t care if her roof will make it through gale-force winds.
“The only way he’ll hurt someone is if you keep looking for him,” Sally adds. “Then my sister will get hurt, and I will, too, and it will all be for nothing.”
She’s got the sort of logic Gary can’t argue with. The sky is getting darker, and when Gary looks at Sally he sees only her eyes. What’s right and what’s wrong have somehow gotten confused. “I don’t know what to do,” he admits. “In all of this, I seem to have a problem. I’m not impartial. I can pretend to be, but I’m not.”
He’s staring at her the way he did when she first answered the door. Sally can feel his intentions and his torment both; she’s well aware of what he wants.
Gary Hallet is getting leg cramps sitting in the Honda, but he’s not going anywhere yet. His grandfather used to tell him that most folks had it all wrong: The truth of the matter was, you could lead a horse to water, and if the water was cool enough, if it was truly clear and sweet, you wouldn’t have to force him to drink. Tonight Gary feels a whole lot more like the horse than the rider. He has stumbled into love, and now he’s stuck there. He’s fairly used to not getting what he wants, and he’s dealt with it, yet he can’t help but wonder if that’s only because he didn’t want anything too badly. Well, he does now. He looks out at the parking lot. By afternoon he’ll be back where he belongs; his dogs will go crazy when they see him, his mail will be waiting outside his front door, the milk in his refrigerator will still be fresh enough to use in his coffee. The hitch is, he doesn’t want to go. He’d rather be here, crammed into this tiny Honda, his stomach growling with hunger, his desire so bad he doesn’t know if he could stand up straight. His eyes are burning hot, and he knows he can never stop himself when he’s going to cry. He’d better not even try.