Tony and Susan by Austin Wright Page B

other sights of your journey.’
    ‘There wasn’t much to see,’ Tony said.
    They turned around, and for a second time Tony Hastings left the mountain drive, with a second sharp agony of partition from his love a prisoner there and he cowardly abandoning her. Begging her to understand why.
    They stopped where the road from above joined. ‘I lost my trail somewhere coming out,’ he reminded them, ‘but I think it might have been here.’
    ‘Makes a difference,’ Andes said. ‘That road comes across the top of the ridge from the next valley.’
    ‘If he came that way he probably got off at the Bear Valley Exit,’ the driver said.
    ‘Let’s try it.’
    The road wound up and in a few moments was going down. They went around a curve with an old white trailer in the trees just above. ‘There’s the trailer!’ he said.
    No car parked.
    ‘Keep going, don’t slow down,’ Andes said. They were going fast and it was out of sight in a moment.
    The trailer must have been stationed there for years, with young trees grown up all around, locking it in.
    ‘You sure?’ Andes said.
    Then the small white church.
    ‘That’s the one I saw, I’m sure of that. I don’t know if it means anything.’
    ‘What happened, your guy stopped there?’
    ‘No, I thought I saw my car parked there. He said it wasn’t, and I could easily have been wrong.’
    ‘We’ll check it out.’
    They came down into a village with a greenhouse which Tony Hastings recognized.
    ‘Bear Valley Exit, more and more obvious,’ the driver said.
    There were signs to the Interstate, then the entrance ramp and the highway bridge crossing above. They pulled over again.
    ‘Do you think you could find the place where you stopped?’
    ‘On the Interstate? That would be hard.’
    ‘Well it’s a long shot anyway.’
    ‘What?’
    ‘Evidence they might have dropped, who they were, tracks, footprints, that kind of thing.’
    ‘It was on the hard shoulder.’
    ‘Yeah.’
    They sat on the country road by the entrance to the Interstate. Bobby Andes was thinking. He said, ‘They went in and when they saw you they turned out their lights and called you? What did they turn the lights out for?’
    ‘Damned if I know. Maybe they thought they could sneak up on me.’
    Andes laughed, without mirth.
    ‘And they went in, and they came out again, and they tried to run you down?’
    ‘Yes.’
    He was tapping on his notebook. ‘I hate to say this, but I think maybe we’d ought take a look up that mountain road.’
    Tony Hastings clutched as if something fatal had been said.
    ‘Go the McCorkle way,’ Bobby Andes told the driver. He turned around and explained to Tony: ‘We’ll go the other way so we don’t have to go by the trailer. If someone’s in there and sees a police car twice.’
    They went fast, a strong highway up the side of the ridge. It took Tony a long time before he could ask. ‘What are you expecting to find up that road?’
    ‘We’ll find out when we find out,’ Bobby Andes said. ‘Nothing, I expect.’

TEN
    Upstairs, water running, Dorothy taking a shower. Susan Morrow thumbs ahead, trying not to see words, finds PART TWO not far ahead. How sad it is, she thinks. Sadness in the news to come, which nobody mentions but all expect. She gropes for the possible loophole Edward might have allowed, but finds none. Meanwhile, despite the sadness, she feels this energy and does not know if it’s her own chemistry or the book, Edward in a state of excitement, enjoying his work? She likes to see Edward enjoying his work, it sparks her up. She awaits the horrible discovery her spirit deplores, she awaits it avidly.
Nocturnal Animals 9
    The reason Tony Hastings was afraid to go back up that mountain driveway. There was no reason and hence no fear. An irrational residue of the night. No reason to be afraid now, he was safe in the back seat of the comfortable police car with two officials (representatives of the civilization which had taken him back)