Chapter 4
The Cold Room
It didn't take Mitchell long to find the first of the two things he was looking for.
Beer.
He stopped at Bradford's Drive Through. Mitchell never used the drive-through. He liked going inside where he could talk to the attractive little blonde behind the counter. They'd become friends the year before. Mitchell knew he didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of getting in her panties, but he liked talking to her anyway.
He always bought his beer and cigarettes there.
Mitchell swung back by the hotel and put three Coronas in his cooler. That was all it would hold. He kept one bottle out and put the other two on the table over by the window. Mitchell carried his bottle back to the flatbed. It was time to find the second thing he'd come for.
As he was pulling out, he spotted a familiar truck. It was David and Mike Maddox, brothers from Greenville he'd worked with before. Mike was carrying in his Nintendo as Mitchell went by. He threw his hand up and Mitchell did the same.
It didn't take Mitchell long to find who he was looking for. He went to a trailer at the end of a long gravel road. In the yard were the upper half of a dog house and a fallen-over sign that had read "yard sale." There was a dented-in mailbox that hung from a splintered wooden post. The flag was up, but the lid had long since fallen off. It lay hidden in the tall grass around the post. The trailer was as battered-looking as the mailbox. The diamond-shaped window in the trailer's front door was gone and in its place was half a roll of duck tape (the poor southerner's fix-all cure). The left half of the trailer was painted an off-white color, and the other half was pale lime green. Pieces of white underpinning lay scattered across the yard, casualties of some long-forgotten storm.
Her old-style Volkswagen Bug wasn't there. That was what Mitchell had been hoping for.
"Well, shit on a shingle," Mitchell said.
He wasn't upset. Mitchell hardly ever got upset.
She just wasn't home.
He could look elsewhere.
Mitchell went back up the gravel road, once again singing along with the boys of N'Sync.
Mitchell turned up the bottle and drank the last sip of his Corona, before tossing the empty longneck bottle in the passenger-side floorboard. He looked down at his wristwatch. A cartoon mouse's white-gloved hands were pointing out that it was five minutes to six. If she still worked the same hours she had the year before, she'd be getting off in less than an hour. He leaned over to look in the rearview mirror. Mitchell had traded in his white cowboy hard hat for his black Stetson. He'd traded his boxer shorts for a pair of jeans and slipped on a sleeveless denim vest.
He adjusted his hat and took one last drag on his cigarette, holding it in his mouth, doing his cowboy pose.
He paused and glanced in the rearview mirror. Mitchell flashed himself a grin, hooked his thumbs where a pair of six-shooters ought to be, then drew invisible pistols in one smooth motion.
"Pew, pew."
He blew away the pretend smoke from the imaginary six-shooters and spun them before holstering them again. He opened the truck door and flicked the butt onto the pavement.
Mitchell nodded to himself.
Time to go get my Whopper.
His cowboy boots made a clicking noise as he strode confidently across the parking lot of Burger King.
There was a woman with a little boy who wanted a chicken tender kid's meal and a toy. He wanted a toy so badly that he felt the need to say so every five seconds. The line moved so slow.
"Buddy, I hope they got two toys," Mitchell smiled at the kid. The kid, not sure what to make of the large talking man, hid behind his mother's dress.
At last, the woman ordered the kid's meal. The kid shut the hell up.
Mitchell got up to the counter.
Looking down at the register, she said, "May I take your order, please?"
"Yeah, I would like a Whopper, with nothing on it."
Her name tag said Kim, but to Mitchell she was Whopper. Kim recognized his voice. She was smiling before she ever looked up at him.
"Mitchell!" she squealed.
Mitchell responded with one of his famous catchphrases, "Did ya miss me?"
The whole restaurant felt her excitement.
A man halfway through a chicken sandwich nearly swallowed the whole thing when Kim squealed.
Kim's longtime manager looked out from her office. The moment she spotted Mitchell, she smiled, shook her head, and gave him a thumbs-up before disappearing back into her phone call.
Kim's hair bounced on her shoulders and around her neck like rusty-colored springs. She squealed again loud enough to draw stares from an elderly couple in the smoking section. She didn't care. Kim leaned over the counter and planted a loud kiss on Mitchell's cheek.
A man behind Mitchell in line made a coughing noise that said, take it to a room, buddy. The man didn't bother Mitchell any. Hell, taking this to a room was exactly what Mitchell wanted to do.
Mitchell grinned at Whopper. "What time do you get off?"
Whopper looked over at the clock behind the counter.
"In about twenty more minutes."
"We'll talk then. I'll just have a Pepsi for now."
Mitchell sat outside on one of the faded metal picnic tables that every Burger King seemed to have back then, smoking one of his bad-smelling cigarettes and drinking his Pepsi.
Mitchell mindlessly picked at the flaking green paint of the table like it was a scab.
He passed the time trying not to think about what had happened the year before. He passed the time trying not to think about Winnie. He passed the time trying not to think that maybe...just maybe...if he stayed in Cliffside long enough...he might find her.
Before he knew it, he was thinking about all of those things.
He could hear the humming of engines and customers ordering fast food from their cars.
His cigarette burned down dangerously close to burning the inside of his fingers. The twenty minutes passed faster than he had thought that they would. A heavy hand landed on his shoulder, making him drop his cigarette before the fire could tickle his fingers.
"Let's get outta here."
Mitchell's eyes wandered from Whopper's ankles up the length of her legs. By the time they reached her smile, he was convinced twenty minutes had been the longest wait of his life.
"Yeah, let's get outta here."
Jennings was leaning against the bed of his Chevy, drinking beer and talking with the Maddox brothers and Shane Miller, when Mitchell pulled into the parking lot outside Room 115. Jennings pointed at Mitchell when he spotted Whopper riding in the passenger seat. Mitchell just smiled back.
Whopper wrapped both arms around Mitchell's waist, her hands wandering just enough to make Mitchell forget all about the key card in his hand. He laughed.
"Woman, let me get the door open."
Mitchell stepped into the room and stopped.
"Dang, that AC's crankin'. Gonna have your high beams on."
Kim rolled her eyes and laughed.
He crossed the room and cranked the thermostat all the way to seventy-eight. "They ain't got to refrigerate us."
He forgot all about it.
Kim sat down on the bed. Mitchell grabbed two Coronas out of his cooler. He opened both and flicked the lids over into the waste basket. He sat down on the bed. Whopper took both of the beers from Mitchell's hands and set them on the nightstand.
"We can drink that later, let's work up a thirst first."
Kim laughed as Mitchell helped her out of her uniform shirt. It landed in a heap beside the bed.
He smiled down at her.
For the first time since he'd driven into Cliffside, Winnie wasn't on his mind.
Mitchell reached for Kim...then froze.
Something moved just out of the corner of his eye. Something fast. Something he couldn't recognize.
A light rustle came from the other bed in the room. To Mitchell it sounded as if someone had sat down on the bed. Whatever had been building between him and Kim was suddenly gone.
Kim lay there waiting. Mitchell looked like a veteran hearing fireworks.
She frowned. "Mitchell?"
Nothing.
Whopper put her clothes back on hurriedly, upset and embarrassed.
"Why did you bring me here, if you...you didn't want me like that?"
Mitchell couldn't answer.
Nothing he said was going to make sense. She was already pissed. She could just leave and he would meet back up with her in a few days. At that moment he couldn't stop looking at the other bed.
Mitchell followed Whopper out of the hotel room, pulling his jeans up as he did.
When Mitchell came back from taking Kim to her car, the other bed's quilt and sheet were pulled down as if someone was preparing to climb into the bed. On the room's carpeted floor were wet footprints leading from the room's door. He followed the tracks to the bathroom, where they stopped. Mitchell turned around and looked back through the room toward the door. The wet marks on the carpet were gone, and the bed was made.
But the room was still so damn cold.
Kim Rhodes "Whopper" on Mitchell Carrington After the Incident at the River Weave Plant:
"I know that Mitchell had other women.
"He had another woman while he was seeing me that last shutdown in Cliffside. He'd had another one the year before too...before Winnie disappeared.
"I asked him if she knew about me.
"He said yes.
"Then I asked him what she thought about me and him. He told me that they had both decided that it wasn't cheating as long as he used a condom, and whoever she was with used one.
"I wouldn't have been with him like that, but I loved him and hoped that he would love me.
"I always hoped he'd find peace."
(Miss Rhodes looks sad and glances out the window.)
"I suppose he never could."