Tony and Susan E-Book

Austin Wright

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2010

Beschreibung

The novel that inspired the 2016 major motion picture Nocturnal Animals, starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Amy Adams, is a dazzling, eerie, riveting thriller of fear and regret, blood and revenge. Many years after their divorce, Susan Morrow receives a strange gift from her ex-husband. A manuscript that tells the story of a terrible crime: an ambush on the highway, a secluded cabin in the woods; a thrilling chiller of death and corruption. How could such a harrowing story be told by the man she once loved? And why, after so long, has he sent her such a disturbing and personal message...? Originally published as Tony and Susan.

Leseprobe

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

Austin Wright was born in New York in 1922. He was a novelist and academic, for many years Professor of English at the University of Cincinnati. He lived with his wife and daughters in Cincinnati, and died in 2003 at the age of eighty.

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

AUSTIN WRIGHT

Copyright

First published in the United States in 1993 by Baskerville Publishers Ltd.

Originally published in Great Britain in 1994 by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Ltd.

Reissued in Great Britain in hardback and export and airside trade paperback in 2010 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Copyright © Austin Wright, 1993

The moral right of Austin Wright to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

First eBook Edition: January 2010

ISBN: 978-1-848-87750-4

Atlantic Books

An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

Contents

Cover

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

Title Page

Copyright

BEFORE

THE FIRST SITTING

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

FIRST INTERLUDE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

THE SECOND SITTING

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

SECOND INTERLUDE

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

THE THIRD SITTING

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

AFTER

ONE

TWO

BEFORE

This goes back to the letter Susan Morrow’s first husband Edward sent her last September. He had written a book, a novel, and would she like to read it? Susan was shocked because, except for Christmas cards from his second wife signed ‘Love,’ she hadn’t heard from Edward in twenty years.

So she looked him up in her memory. She remembered he had wanted to write, stories, poems, sketches, anything in words, she remembered it well. It was the chief cause of trouble between them. But she thought he had given up writing later when he went into insurance. Evidently not.

In the unrealistic days of their marriage there was a question whether she should read what he wrote. He was a beginner and she a tougher critic than she meant to be. It was touchy, her embarrassment, his resentment. Now in his letter he said, damn! but this book is good. How much he had learned about life and craft. He wanted to show her, let her read and see, judge for herself. She was the best critic he ever had, he said. She could help him too, for in spite of its merits he was afraid the novel lacked something. She would know, she could tell him. Take your time, he said, scribble a few words, whatever pops into your head. Signed, ‘Your old Edward still remembering.’

The signature irritated her. It reminded her of too much and threatened the peace she had made with her past. She didn’t like to remember or slip back into that unpleasant frame of mind. But she told him to send the book along. She felt ashamed of her suspicions and objections. Why he’d ask her rather than a more recent acquaintance. The imposition, as if what pops into her head were easier than thinking things through. She couldn’t refuse, though, lest it look like she were still living in the past. The package arrived a week later. Her daughter Dorothy brought it into the kitchen where they were eating peanut butter sandwiches, she and Dorothy and Henry and Rosie. The package was heavily taped. She extracted the manuscript and read the title page:

NOCTURNAL ANIMALS

A Novel By

Edward Sheffield

Well typed, clean pages. She wondered what the title meant. She liked Edward’s gesture, reconciling and flattering. She had a sneaky feeling that put her on guard, so that when her real husband Arnold came in that night, she announced boldly: I heard from Edward today.

Edward who?

Oh, Arnold.

Oh Edward. Well. What does that old bastard have to say for himself ?

That was three months ago. There’s a worry in Susan’s mind that comes and goes, hard to pin down. When she’s not worrying, she worries lest she’s forgotten what she’s worrying about. And when she knows what she’s worrying about, like whether Arnold understood what she meant, or what he meant when he said what he meant this morning, even then she has a feeling it’s really something else, more important. Meanwhile she runs the house, pays the bills, cleans and cooks, takes care of the kids, teaches three times a week in the community college, while her husband in the hospital repairs hearts. In the evenings she reads, preferring that to television. She reads to take her mind off herself.

She looks forward to Edward’s novel because she likes to read, and she’s willing to believe he can improve, but for three months she has put it off. The delay was not intentional. She put the manuscript in the closet and forgot, remembering thereafter only at wrong times, like while shopping for groceries or driving Dorothy to her riding lesson or grading freshman papers. When she was free, she forgot.

When not forgetting, she would try to clean out her mind to read Edward’s novel in the way it deserved. The problem was old memory, coming back like an old volcano, full of rumble and quake. All that abandoned intimacy, his out-of-date knowledge of her, and hers of him. Her memory of his admiration of himself, his vanity, also his fears – his smallness – knowledge she must ignore if her reading was to be fair. She’s determined to be fair. To be fair she must deny her memory and make as if she were a stranger.

She couldn’t believe he merely wanted her to read his book. It must be something personal, a new twist in their dead romance. She wondered what Edward thought was missing in his book. His letter suggested he didn’t know, but she wondered if there was a secret message: Susan and Edward, a subtle love song? Saying, read this, and when you look for what is missing, find Susan.

Or hate, which seemed more likely, though they got rid of that ages ago. If she was the villain, the missing thing a poison to lick like Snow White’s deep red apple. It would be nice to know how ironic Edward’s letter really was.

But though she prepared herself, she kept forgetting, did not read, and in time believed her failure was a completed event. This made her both defiant and ashamed until she got a card from Stephanie a few days before Christmas, with a note from Edward attached. He’s coming to Chicago, the note said, December 30, one day only, staying at the Marriott, hope to see you then. She was alarmed because he’d want to talk about his unread manuscript, and then relieved to realize there was still time. After Christmas: Arnold her husband will be going to a convention of heart surgeons, three days. She can read it then. It will occupy her mind, a good distraction from Arnold’s trip, and she needn’t feel guilty after all.

Anticipating, she wonders what Edward looks like now. She remembers him blond, birdlike, eyes glancing down his beaky nose, unbelievably skinny with wire arms and pointed elbows, genitals disproportionately large among the bones. His quiet voice, clipped words, impatient as if he thought most of what he was obliged to say were too stupid to need saying.

Will he seem more dignified or more pompous? Probably he has put on weight, and his hair will be gray unless he’s bald. She wonders what he’ll think of her. She would like him to notice how much more tolerant, easygoing, and generous she is and how much more she knows. She fears he’ll be put off by the difference between twenty-four and forty-nine. She has changed her glasses, but in Edward’s day she wore no glasses at all. She is chubbier, breasts bigger, cheeks rosy where they were pale, convex where they were concave. Her hair, which in Edward’s day was long straight and silky, is neat and short and turning gray. She has become healthy and wholesome, and Arnold says she looks like a Scandinavian skier.

Now that she is really going to read it, she wonders what kind of novel it is. Like traveling without knowing what country you’re going to. The worst would be if it’s inept, which might vindicate her for the past but would embarrass her now. Even if it’s not inept, there are risks: an intimate trip through an unfamiliar mind, forced to contemplate icons more meaningful to others than herself, confined with strangers she never chose, asked to participate in alien customs. With Edward as guide, whose dominance she once so struggled to escape.

The negative possibilities are tremendous: to be bored, to be offended, bathed in sentimentality, stunned by depression and gloom. What interests Edward at forty-nine? She feels sure only of what the novel will not be. Unless Edward has changed radically, it won’t be a detective story or baseball story or Western. It won’t be a story of blood and revenge.

What’s left? She’ll find out. She begins Monday night, day after Christmas, after Arnold has gone. It will take her three evenings to complete.

THE FIRST SITTING

ONE

That night, as Susan Morrow settles down to read Edward’s manuscript, a fear shocks her like a bullet. It begins with a moment of intense concentration which disappears too fast to remember, leaving a residue of unspecified fright. Danger, threat, disaster, she doesn’t know what. She tries to recover what was on her mind, thinking back to the kitchen, the pans and cooking utensils, the dishwasher. Then to catching her breath on the living room couch, where she had the dangerous thought. Dorothy and Henry with Henry’s friend Mike are playing Monopoly on the study floor. She declines their invitation to play too.

There’s the Christmas tree, cards on the mantel, games and clothing with tissue paper on the couch. A mess. The traffic at O’Hare dies in the house, Arnold is in New York by now. Unable to remember what frightened her, she tries to ignore it, rests her legs on the coffee table, puffs and wipes her glasses.

The worry on her mind insists, it’s greater than she can explain. She dreads Arnold’s trip, if that’s what it is, like the end of the world, but finds no logical reason for such a feeling. Plane crash, but planes don’t crash. The convention seems innocuous. People will recognize him or spot his name tag. He’ll be flattered as usual to discover how distinguished he is, which will put him in the best of moods. The Chickwash interview will do no harm if nothing comes of it. If by rare chance something does come of it, there’s a whole new life and the opportunity to live in Washington if she wants. He’s with colleagues and old hands, people she should trust. Probably she’s just tired.

Still, she postpones Edward. She reads short things, the newspaper, editorials, crossword puzzle. The manuscript resists, or she resists, afraid to begin lest the book make her forget her danger, whatever that is. The manuscript is so heavy, so long. Books always resist her at the start, because they commit so much time. They can bury what she was thinking, sometimes forever. She could be a different person by the time she’s through. This case is worse than usual, for Edward coming back to life brings new distractions that have nothing to do with her thoughts. He’s dangerous too, unloading his brain, the bomb in him. Never mind. If she can’t remember her trouble, the book will paint over it. Then she won’t want to stop. She opens the box, looks at the title – Nocturnal Animals. She sees, going into the house at the zoo through the tunnel, glass tanks in dim purple light with strange busy little creatures, huge ears and big eye globes, thinking day is night. Come on, let’s begin.

Nocturnal Animals 1

There was this man Tony Hastings, his wife Laura, and his daughter Helen, traveling east at night on the Interstate in northern Pennsylvania. They were starting their vacation, going to their summer cottage in Maine. They were driving at night because they had been slow starting and had been further delayed having to get a new tire along the way. It was Helen’s idea, when they got back into the car after dinner, somewhere in eastern Ohio: ‘Let’s not look for a motel,’ she said, ‘let’s drive all night.’

‘Do you mean that?’ Tony Hastings said.

‘Sure, why not?’

The suggestion violated his sense of order and alarmed his habits. He was a mathematics professor who took pride in reliability and good sense. He had quit smoking six months before but sometimes still carried a pipe in his mouth for the steadiness it imparted. His first reaction to the suggestion was, don’t be an idiot, but he suppressed that, wanting to be a good father. He considered himself a good father, a good teacher, a good husband. A good man. Yet he also felt a kinship with cowboys and baseball players. He had never ridden a horse and had not played baseball since childhood, and he was not very big and strong, but he wore a black mustache and considered himself easygoing. Responding to the idea of vacation and the freedom of a highway at night, the sudden lark of it, he was liberated by the irresponsibility of not having to hunt for a place to stay, not having to stop at signs and go up to desks and ask for rooms, lifted by the thought of riding into the night leaving his habits behind.

‘Are you willing to share the driving at three a.m.?’

‘Anytime, Daddy, anytime.’

‘What do you think, Laura?’

‘You won’t be too tired in the morning?’

He knew the exotic night would be followed by the ghastly day and he would feel horrible trying not to fall asleep in the afternoon and getting them back on a normal schedule, but he was a cowboy on vacation, and it was a good time to be irresponsible.

‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

So on they went, zipping along the Interstate through the slowly descending June twilight, bypassing industrial cities, bending slowly at high speed around the curves and over the long rises and descents through farm land while the sun sinking behind them flashed in the windows of farmhouses in the high meadows ahead. The family of three was ecstatic with novelty, exclaiming to each other on the beauty of the countryside in this declining day, this angle of light looking away from the sun with the yellow fields and green woods and houses all tinted and changed with ambiguous brightness, and the road pavement also ambiguous, silver in the mirror and black in front.

They stopped for gas in the twilight, and when they came back to the highway the father Tony saw a ragged hitchhiker standing on the shoulder of the ramp up ahead. He began to accelerate. The hitchhiker had a sign, BANGOR ME.

The daughter Helen cried in his ear, ‘He’s going to Bangor, Daddy. Let’s pick him up.’

Tony Hastings sped up. The hitchhiker had overalls and bare shoulders, a long yellow beard and a band around his hair. The man’s eyes looked at Tony as he went past.

‘Aw, Daddy.’

He looked over his shoulder to clear his way back to the highway.

‘He was going to Bangor,’ she said.

‘You want his company for twelve hours?’

‘You never stop for hitchhikers.’

‘Strangers,’ he said, wanting to warn Helen of the world’s dangers but sounding like a prig just the same.

‘Some people aren’t as fortunate as we,’ Helen said. ‘Don’t you feel guilty passing them up?’

‘Guilty? Not me.’

‘We have a car. We have space. We’re going the same way.’

‘Oh Helen,’ Laura said. ‘Don’t be such a schoolgirl.’

‘My pals who hitchhike home from school. What would they do if everybody thought like you?’

Silent a little. Helen said, ‘That guy was perfectly nice. You can tell, how he looked.’

Tony amused, remembering the ragged man. ‘That guy who wanted to bangor me?’

‘Daddy!’

He felt wild in the growing night, exploratory, the unknown.

‘He had a sign,’ Helen said. ‘That was polite of him, a considerate thing to do. And he had a guitar. Didn’t you notice his guitar?’

‘That wasn’t a guitar, that was a machine gun,’ Tony said. ‘All thugs carry their machine guns in instrument cases so they’ll be mistaken for musicians.’

He felt his wife Laura’s hand on the back of his head.

‘He looked like Jesus Christ, Daddy. Didn’t you see his noble face?’

Laura laughed. ‘Everybody with a flowing beard looks like Jesus Christ,’ she said.

‘That’s exactly what I mean,’ Helen said. ‘If he has a flowing beard he’s got to be okay.’

Laura’s hand on the back of his head, and in the middle was Helen, leaning forward from the back seat with her head on the seatback between them.

‘Daddy?’

‘Yes?’

‘Was that an obscene joke you made, a moment ago?’

‘What are you talking about?’

Nothing. They drove quietly into the dark. Later the daughter Helen sang camp songs and the mother Laura joined in, even the father Tony, who never sang, contributed a bass, and they took their music along the great empty Interstate into Pennsylvania, while the color thickened and clogged into dark.

Then it was full night and Tony Hastings was driving alone, no voices now, only the roar of wind obscuring the roar of engine and tires, while his wife Laura sat silent in the dark beside him and his daughter Helen was out of sight in the back seat. There was not much traffic. The occasional lights on the opposite side flickered through the trees that separated the lanes. Sometimes they rose or dropped when the lanes diverged. On his own side from time to time he would overtake the red lights of someone ahead, and occasionally headlights would appear in the mirror and a car or truck would catch up with him, but for long stretches there was no one on his side at all. Nor was there light in the countryside, which he could not see but which he imagined to be all woods. He was glad to have his car between him and the wilderness, and he hummed his music thinking coffee in an hour, while meanwhile he enjoyed his good feeling, wide awake, steady – in the dark pilot house of his ship with the passengers asleep. He was glad of the hitchhiker he had left behind, of the love of his wife and the funny humor of his daughter.

He was a proud driver with a tendency to be self-righteous. He tried to stay as close to sixty-five as he could. On a long hill he overtook two pairs of tail lights side by side blocking both lanes ahead of him. One car was trying to pass the other but could not pull ahead, and he had to reduce his speed. He got into the left lane behind the car trying to pass. ‘Come on, let’s go,’ he muttered, for he could be an impatient driver too. Then it occurred to him the car on the left was not trying to pass but was having a conversation with the other car, and indeed both cars were slowing down still more.

God damn it, quit blocking the road. It was one of his self righteous principles never to blow his horn, but he tapped it now, one quick blast. The car in front of him zoomed ahead. He pulled forward, passed the other, slid into the right lane again, feeling a little embarrassed. The slow car fell behind. The car in front, which had pulled ahead, slowed down again. He guessed the driver was waiting for the other car to resume their game, and he pulled out to pass, but the car in front swung left to block his way, and he had to hit the brakes. He felt a shock as he realized the driver of the other car meant to play games with him. The car slowed more. He noticed the headlights of the third car in the mirror far behind. He avoided blowing his horn. They were down to thirty miles per hour. He decided to pass in the right lane, but the other car swung in front of him again.

‘Uh-oh,’ he said.

Laura moved.

‘We’ve got trouble,’ he said.

Now the car in front was going a little faster but still too slow. The third car remained far behind. He blew his horn.

‘Don’t do that,’ Laura said. ‘It’s what he wants.’

He pounded on the steering wheel. He thought a moment and took a breath. ‘Hang on,’ he said, pressed his foot down on the gas, and zipped to the left. This time he got by. The other car blew its horn, and he went fast.

‘Kids,’ Laura said.

From the back seat Helen spoke: ‘Bunch of jerks.’ He had not known she was awake.

‘Are we rid of them?’ Tony asked. The other car was behind a short distance, and he felt relieved.

‘Helen!’ Laura said. ‘No!’

‘What?’ Tony said.

‘She gave them the finger.’

The other car was a big old Buick with a dented left fender, dark, blue or black. He had not looked to see who was in it. They were gaining on him. He went faster, up to eighty, but the other headlights stayed close, tailgating, almost touching him.

‘Tony,’ Laura said quietly.

‘Oh Jesus,’ Helen said.

He tried to go faster still.

‘Tony,’ Laura said.

They stayed with him.

‘If you just drive normally,’ she said.

The third car was a long way back, the headlights disappearing on curves and reappearing after a long interval on straightaways.

‘Eventually they’ll get bored.’

He let his speed return to sixty-five, while the other car remained so close he could not see the headlights in his mirror, only the glare. The car began blowing its horn, then pulled out to pass.

‘Let him go,’ Laura said.

The car drove along beside him, faster when he tried to speed up, slowing down when he did. There were three guys, he couldn’t see them well, only the guy in the front passenger seat who had a beard and was grinning at him.

So he decided to drive steadily at sixty-five. Pay no attention, if he could. The guys cut in front and slowed down, forcing him to slow down too. When he tried to pass, they cut left to prevent it. He swung back into the right lane and they let him catch up with them. They pulled ahead and swung back and forth between the two lanes. They went into the right lane as if to invite him to pass, but when he tried they swung back into his path. In a surge of rage he refused to give way, and there was a loud metallic explosion and a jolt, and he knew he had hit them.

‘Oh shit!’ he said.

As if in pain, the other car backed off and let him by. Serves them right, he said, they asked for it, but oh shit, he also said, and he slowed down, wondering what to do, while the other car slowed behind him.

‘What are you doing?’ Laura said.

‘We ought to stop.’

‘Daddy,’ Helen said.

‘We can’t stop!’

‘We hit them, we have to stop.’

‘They’ll kill us!’

‘Are they stopping?’

He was thinking about leaving the site of an accident, wondering if the accident to their car would sober them up, if it was safe to assume that.

Then he heard Laura. In spite of the pride in his virtues, he usually relied on her for the finer moral points, and she was saying, ‘Tony, please don’t stop.’ Her voice was low and quiet, and he would remember that a long time.

So he kept going.

‘You can take the next exit and report to the police,’ she said.

‘I got their license number,’ Helen said.

But the other car was after him again, they roared up beside him on his left, the guy with the beard was sticking his arm out the window and waving or shaking his fist or pointing, and he was shouting, and the car got ahead of him and veered, edged into his path trying to force him onto the shoulder.

‘God help us,’ Laura said.

‘Smash into them,’ Helen screamed. ‘Don’t let them, don’t let them!’

He couldn’t avoid it, another bump, a slight one with a crunching sound against his left front, he felt the damage and something rattling, shaking his steering wheel as the other car forced him to slow. The car trembled as if mortally wounded, and he gave up, pulled onto the shoulder, and prepared to stop. The other car stopped in front of him. The third car, the one that had been lagging behind, came into sight and zipped by at high speed.

Tony Hastings started to open his door, but Laura touched his arm.

‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘Stay in the car.’

TWO

That’s the end of the chapter, and Susan Morrow pauses to reflect. It looks more serious than expected, and she’s relieved, glad to see the firmness of the writing, how well Edward has learned his craft. She’s in for something and worries on behalf of Tony and his family on that lonely highway amid such menace. Is he safe if he keeps the doors locked? The question, she realizes, is not what he can do to keep them safe, but what the story has destined for him. That’s Edward, who has the power in this case: what he has in mind.

She appreciates the irony in Edward’s treatment of Tony, which suggests maturity, an ability to mock himself. She’s full of illegal questions, like whether that’s Christmas-card Stephanie putting her hand so affectionately on Tony’s neck, and whether Helen is derived from Edward’s own domestic life. She reminds herself not to confuse Tony with Edward, fiction is fiction, yet noticing Tony’s last name she wonders if Edward deliberately named him after the town where they grew up.

She wonders how Stephanie likes Edward the Writer. She remembers, when Edward told her he wanted to quit school and write, she felt betrayed, but she was ashamed to admit it. After the divorce she followed Edward’s surrender of that dream through her mother’s reports. She drew her own conclusions, the transformation through stages of Edward the Poet into Edward the Capitalist, thinking it vindicated her doubts. From poetry writing to sports writing. From sports writing to journalism teaching. From journalism teaching to insurance. He was what he was and was not what he was not. Money would compensate for lost dreams. With Stephanie presumably behind him all the way. So Susan supposed, but apparently she was wrong.

She pauses to locate herself before going on. She puts the box on the couch beside her, looks up at the two paintings, tries to see them fresh, the abstract beach, the brown geometry. Monopoly bargaining on the floor in the study, Henry’s friend Mike has a mean laugh. On the gray rug in this room, Jeffrey twitches, asleep. Martha approaches him, sniffs, jumps on the coffee table, threatening Dorothy’s camera. What?

That menacing unidentified monster she remembers in her mind before she began to read. Has the book put it to sleep? Just keep reading. Paragraphs and chapters on a lonely highway at night. She thinks of Tony, the tall thin face with the beaked nose, the glasses, the sad bagged eyes. No, that’s Edward. Tony has a black mustache. She must remember the black mustache.

Nocturnal Animals 2

The driver’s door of the old Buick opened and a man stepped out. Tony Hastings felt Laura his wife’s hand on his arm, to restrain or give him courage. He waited. The other men in the car were looking at him from their windows. He couldn’t see what they looked like.

The man ambled over, slowly. He was wearing a pitcher’s warmup jacket, zipper open but fastened at the bottom, with his hands in the pockets. He had a high forehead, the front part of his head bald. He looked at the front of Tony Hastings’s car and came over to the window.

‘Evening,’ he said.

Tony Hastings felt rage rising for what he had been through, but he was more frightened than angry. ‘Good evening,’ he said.

‘You’re supposed to stop when there’s an accident.’

‘I know that.’

‘Why didn’t you stop?’

Tony Hastings did not know what to say. The reason he did not stop was that he was afraid, but he was afraid to admit that.

The man leaned down and looked inside the car, at Laura and at Helen in the back.

‘Hah?’

‘What?’

‘Why didn’t you?’

Close by, the man had big teeth in a small mouth with a small receding jaw. He had bulging eyes over small cheeks and his hair stood up in a pompadour behind the bald front of his head. His jaw was working but his mouth could not shut. The jacket had an elaborate Y in curling script sewed on the left front. Tony Hastings was thin, he had no muscle, only a black mustache, his soft sensitive face. He kept his hand on the key in the ignition. The window was half open, the door was locked.

Laura spoke up, her voice strong. ‘We were going to report it to the police.’

‘The police? You’re not supposed to leave the scene of an accident. The law says. It’s a crime.’

‘We have reason not to trust you on this lonely road,’ Laura said. Her voice was louder than usual with an edge Tony recognized when she said drastic, revolutionary, or scared things.

‘What you say?’

‘Your behavior on the road – ’

The man called: ‘Hey Turk!’ The doors on the right side of the other car opened and two men got out. They were not in any hurry.

‘I’m warning you,’ Laura said.

‘Be ready,’ she whispered to Tony.

The man put his hands on the half-open window, stuck his head in, and grinned. ‘What did you say? You’re warning me?’

‘You stay away from us.’

‘Why lady, we’ve got an accident to report.’

The other two men had a flashlight and were inspecting the front of Tony’s car, putting their hands on the hood, leaning down out of sight.

‘All right,’ Tony said, thinking all right if you want the protocol of accidents we’ll have the protocol of accidents. ‘Let’s exchange information.’

‘You have information you want to exchange?’

‘Names, addresses, insurance companies.’ He felt a sharp nudge from Laura, who thought giving these thugs their name was a bad idea, but protocol is protocol, he knew no other way.

‘Insurance companies, hey?’ The man laughed.

‘You have no insurance?’

‘Haha.’

‘I’m going to report this to the police,’ Tony said. He heard the weakness in his voice.

‘Right, we report this to the cops, right,’ the man said.

‘So, we’ll go to the cops. Let’s do that,’ Tony said.

‘Great idea, man. What do we do, go together? What’s to keep you from running away? It was your fuckin fault, right?’

‘We’ll see about that!’ Laura said.

‘Hey Ray,’ one of the men in front said. ‘This guy’s got a flat tire.’

‘Aw come on,’ Tony said.

Ray went around to see. The men started to laugh. ‘Well what do you know?’ ‘Well sure thing.’ Someone kicked the tire, they could feel the jolt in the car.

‘Don’t believe it,’ Helen said from behind.

The three men came back to the driver’s window. One of them had a black beard and looked like a movie bandit. The other had a round face and wore silver rimmed glasses.

‘Yes sir,’ Ray said. ‘Your right front tire is flat, sure is.’

‘Flat as a pancake,’ the man with the movie beard said.

‘It sure is flat,’ Ray said. ‘You must have busted it when you was shoving us off the road.’ Someone cackled.

‘It wasn’t I, it was you who – ’

‘Hush up,’ Laura said.

‘Don’t believe them Daddy, don’t believe them, it’s a lie, it’s a trick.’

‘What’s that?’ Ray said, sharper than before. ‘You don’t believe me? You think I’m a liar? Shit, man.’

He waved the other guys back. ‘You don’t got a flat, go on and drive. Start the engine and drive. Drive on it, damn you, drive away. Nobody’s stopping you.’

Tony hesitated. He realized what the vibration had meant and the jiggling of the steering wheel when he was forced to stop after the second collision. He leaned back in his seat and murmured, ‘God damn!’

‘Tell you what,’ Ray said. ‘We’ll fix it for you.’ He looked around. ‘Won’t we, guys?’

‘Ya, sure,’ one said.

‘To show you we’re okay, we’ll fix it for you, you won’t have to do a thing. Then we can go to the cops together, you and me, report our accident.’

In a low voice Helen said, ‘Don’t believe them.’

‘You got tire tools, mister?’ the man with the beard said.

‘Don’t get out of the car,’ Laura said.

‘No need,’ Ray said. ‘Use ours. Come on, let’s get moving.’

The three men went to the trunk of their car while Tony and his wife and daughter watched with their doors locked, watched while the men brought out their tools, the jack, the tire iron.

‘You got a spare tire?’ the man with the glasses said. The men started to laugh, except Ray. ‘You can’t change a tire without a spare.’ Ray was not laughing. He was not grinning. He looked in the window and didn’t say anything. Then he said, ‘You wanna give me the keys to the trunk?’

‘Don’t do it!’ Helen said.

The man looked at her a long time, staring.

‘Who the fuck do you think you are?’ he said.

Tony Hastings sighed and opened the door. ‘I’ll open it for you,’ he said. He heard Helen moan in the back, ‘Daddy.’

And Laura saying softly, ‘It’s all right, just be calm.’

He got out and opened the trunk and lifted out the suitcases and boxes in the light of the flashlight held by the man with the beard, until they could get at the spare tire. He watched the two men get it out while Ray stood by. They put the jack under the front wheel, and the man with the beard said, ‘Get them women outa the car.’

‘Come on,’ Ray said. ‘Get them out.’

‘It isn’t necessary, is it?’ Tony Hastings said.

‘Get em out. We’re fixin your tire so get em out.’

Tony looked in at his wife and daughter. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘They just want you out while they fix the tire.’ So they got out and stood close to Tony near the door of the car. He thought if these men were dangerous it would be safer to stay near the car. The men went to work raising the car on the jack and loosening the flattened tire.

‘Hey you,’ Ray said. ‘Come over here.’ When Tony didn’t move, he came over. He said, ‘You think you’re fuckin hot stuff, don’t you?’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘“What are you talking about?” They think they’re fuckin hot stuff, don’t they?’

‘Who?’

‘Them, your women, your bitches. You too. You think you’re something special, you can bump a guy’s car and run off to the cops in violation of the law.’

‘Listen, you were playing some crazy games out there.’

‘Yeah.’

Every so often while they worked a car or a truck went by, full speed. Tony Hastings wished one would stop, he wanted someone civilized between him and these wild men he didn’t know what they might do. Once a car slowed down, he thought it was going to stop, he stepped forward, but something grabbed him by the arm, drew him back. Ray was in front of him, blocking the view, and the car drove on. A little later, he saw the flashing blue lights of a police car approaching. They’re coming to rescue us, he thought, and he ran out toward it as it neared, coming fast. It did not slow down and he suddenly realized it wasn’t going to stop. He waved anyway and tried to shout as it zipped by. He heard women’s family voices shouting too, but the car was already sparkling down the road at a hundred miles an hour out of sight.

‘There goes your cops,’ Ray said. ‘You should have stopped them.’

‘I tried to,’ Tony said. He felt defeated, wondering what other trouble had caught the attention of the police while his own remained unnoticed in the dark.

The men seemed to enjoy their work. They were laughing, and he realized one of them had worked in a garage. Only Ray was not laughing. Tony Hastings did not like the waiting expression on Ray’s pinched chinless face. The man is angry, he said to himself, while his own anger had ravelled out in the strangeness of things. He thought, they are trying to show me they are not what they seemed to be. They are trying to show me they are decent human beings after all. He hoped that was it.

THREE

Susan Morrow sets down the page. Quiet returns, here where she lives, with the sound of the refrigerator, the Monopolyplaying children murmuring and laughing in the next room. Here, in this wooded enclave of winding residential streets, all is calm, all is still. It’s safer here. She arches, stretches, this impulse to the kitchen for more coffee. Resist. Have a green wrapper mint instead, on the table under Martha’s tail.

Once she too drove all night, Susan and Arnold and the children to Cape Cod. Arnold is smarter than Tony Hastings, could he have avoided Tony’s fix? He’s a distinguished man, he could give those men bypass surgery for fixing his tires, would that protect him? He’s also a grinning boy with dusty hair who makes questionable jokes and waits for your response. Tonight Arnold is in a hotel, she almost forgot from worrying about imaginary Tony, in a tropical bamboo lounge underground in the dark, having drinks with the medical folk. Don’t watch.

Martha the cat studies her, quietly puzzled. Every night Susan sits like this, stalking the flat white page in the glare as if she saw something which Martha sees is plainly not there. Martha understands stalking, but what can she stalk in her own lap, and how can she stalk with face so relaxed? Martha stalks for hours too, with only her tail twitching, but when she stalks there’s always something, a mouse or bird or the illusion of one.

Nocturnal Animals 3

The man with the triangular face whose name was Ray, the mouth too small for his chin, the half bald head with the pompadour, stood with hands in his pockets and watched the others work. He tapped his feet on the ground like a dance. I mustn’t forget this is the man who forced me off the road, Tony Hastings said to himself, not forgetting. The man kept murmuring, ‘Fuck you,’ like a song. Tapping his feet and murmuring ‘Fuck you,’ looking at Tony’s wife and daughter standing by the back door of the car close together, as if saying it to them, and then at Tony, looking at Tony while he murmured it, as if to him. In a kind of tune just loud enough to be heard, ‘Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you.’

‘What are you looking at?’ the man said.

‘What were you trying to do, there on the road?’ Tony said.

A truck was coming, it went by, loud. If the man answered Tony did not hear it. A car or truck would go by every three or four minutes, maybe more. As long as cars go by we’re safe, Tony thought, wondering what danger he was safe from.

‘Hot shot,’ the man said.

‘What?’

‘Law-abiding driver.’

‘What?’

‘That all you can say, “what”?’

‘Look here – ’

‘I’m looking.’

He could not speak, caught, not having prepared a speech for his emotions.

‘What were you trying to do, there on the road?’ the man said after a while.

‘We’re just trying to get where we’re going.’

‘Where a you going?’

Tony held back.

‘Where a you going?’

‘We’re trying to get to Maine. We’re just trying to get to Maine.’

‘What’s in Maine?’

Tony did not want to answer.

‘What’s in Maine?’

He felt like a boy resisting bullies.

The man stepped toward him. ‘I said what’s in Maine?’

The man came close enough for Tony to smell the onions with something sweet and liquory, his face level with Tony’s, and though he was thin, Tony knew the man could destroy him. He took a step backward but the man closed the gap. It’s the age difference, Tony said to himself, not adding that he had not been in a fight since he was a boy and never won one then. I live in a different world, he almost said to himself.

He didn’t want to say he had a summer place in Maine.

The man leaned forward, forcing Tony to lean back. He’d better not touch me, he said to himself. The man took hold of Tony’s sweater and pushed a little. ‘What did you say was in Maine?’ he said.

Let go of me, Tony ought to have said. ‘Let go of me,’ he said. He heard his voice frail like a small kid being tortured.

Her voice rang out loud in the night: ‘Let my Daddy alone!’

‘Fuck you baby,’ the man said. He let go of Tony’s sweater, laughed, and strolled over to the women. Terrified, trembling, trying to heat his cowardly blood to the required temperature, Tony followed. ‘What’s in Maine? Your Daddy won’t tell me, so you tell me, okay? What you going to in Maine?’

‘What’s it to you?’ she said.

‘Come on baby, we’re nice guys. We’re fixin your tire. You can tell me, what’s in Maine?’