Chapter 12: Room Nine

Livio had me on the floor before I knew I was falling.

He'd come over the counter. I don't know how.

He was on his knees on the tiles with his body around me and one hand flat over my stomach.

"Stay down," he said into my hair.

Glass ticked onto the floor around us.

Somewhere Orsola was swearing in Italian, long and steady.

"Is anybody hurt?" she shouted. "Sound off."

"Here," said the tall lobsterman.

"Here," bellowed the one with the hearing aids.

The plow driver. The gas station kid. The two church women, from under a booth.

Nobody was hurt.

Livio lifted his head.

His hand was still on my stomach.

Under it, Lina kicked. Hard. Right against his palm.

He went absolutely still.

I pushed his hand away and sat up.

"Get off me."

He got off me.

The volunteer fire company came up the hill in twenty minutes, through a closed road, in a truck with chains on the tires.

They put the car out with foam. There wasn't much left to put out.

The chief was a short man with a white moustache.

He stood in the lot with a flashlight and looked at the car, and then at the motel.

"That's your propane tank," he said to Orsola.

"I know where my propane tank is."

"Six feet from that car. Another two minutes burning and you'd have lost the office. And whoever was in it."

He shone the light across the snow.

There were footprints.

Two sets, side by side, from the back of the car to the road. Already filling in.

"Somebody was standing right here," he said. "Ten, fifteen minutes ago. While you were all inside."

Nobody said anything.

Every face in that lot turned to look at Livio.

He stood in the falling snow in his ruined suit and looked at the footprints.

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