Free Stages by Donald Bowie Page B

fascinated her. She wasn’t quite sure yet whether that freedom was something that only money could buy.
    The first leg of their trip Paula and Jonathan spent discussing their respective mothers’ taste in interior decorating. Both the Rubins and the Bernsteins lived in large, Tudor-style houses with little more than bibs of lawn, so everything had gone into the interiors.
    “Is your mother still on that monochromatic kick?” Jonathan asked.
    “Are you kidding?” Paula replied. “At this point everything is white, except for my grandmother’s hair. That’s orange. When she sits down on one of my mother’s sofas she looks like a pumpkin on a glacier.”
    “My mother is still fond of Louis XV,” Jonathan said. “Ormolu and brocade. I’m not sure if there are sofas and chairs anymore. Everything looks like a ballgown or a chandelier.”
    A few drops of rain spattered the windshield of the Corvette.
    “Oh, dear,” Paula said. “I thought those clouds looked mean.”
    They were on the Connecticut Turnpike, just past New Haven.
    “So, I’ll spritz it off,” Jonathan said. He pushed a button, and windshield washing fluid spurted out. The wipers began to arc back and forth.
    It occurred to Paula that Jonathan drove pretty much the way her mother did, oblivious to everything between the starting and the stopping.
    The rain was coming down harder.
    “Looks like we’re in for a real downpour,” Paula said. Shrugging, Jonathan turned up the volume of Sergeant Pepper , which was playing on the eight track tape deck.
    Suddenly the windshield looked as though a tide were coming in over it.
    Cars were slowing down. Then, just ahead, Paula saw a car sliding with almost balletic grace right across the road; it climbed halfway up an embankment.
    “Oh, my God,” she said, her heart pounding. “Did you see that?”
    Jonathan, who had slowed the car a little, was trying to concentrate on the traffic ahead of him.
    “Maybe you better fasten your seatbelt, Paula,” he said.
    She did as he suggested. The click of the belt latching reassured her a little.
    Two miles down the highway a Volkswagen microbus veered into the guard rail. The doors on the driver’s side were peeled open, and right before Paula’s horrified eyes three small children fell out, one by one, like luggage spilling onto a carousel.
    A moment later someone had stopped his car and was desperately trying to gather up the kids.
    All Paula could do was gasp.
    Jonathan slowed even more.
    “What is wrong with this road ?” Paula finally managed to say.
    “It’s gotten slick,” Jonathan replied. “And there are all these curves.”
    Paula saw that he had a death grip on the steering wheel. As calmly as she could, she said, “Do you think we should stop for a while? Pull over and wait it out?”
    “I guess maybe we should,” Jonathan said. He drove another mile or so, and then, seeing, a sign for a rest area, he braked.
    The car slid like a dish on a lopsided tray.
    In a sort of suspended animation, Paula saw the guard rail looming in front of the car. She heard the grind of the impact in the same instant that her head flew forward and thwacked the dashboard.
    She felt a shock go through her head, and a warm sap all over her face and in her mouth, before she blacked out.

15
    After their fourth visit to the motel on Route 1, Lauren and James came to be known there. When it was available, they were given room 20, a room to which Lauren had developed something of a sentimental attachment. The headboard of room 20’s king-size bed was a long, narrow mirror. By the window were two Danish modern armchairs and a round coffee table with a maple-colored finish that was blotched with water marks and black cigarette bums. On one wall there was a framed photograph of a tigress with a cub in its mouth. The room smelled of tobacco, and virtually every surface was tacky from softdrinks.
    Yet in room 20 Lauren was contentedly at home. The room was the setting of her