* * *
Marisol paused for a moment to watch the State Police car pass by and then looked back to her map of New England to see where she wanted to go next before she programmed the GPS with their destination. She never liked maps that extended beyond a region because they gave her too many things to think about, too many places she might want to visit all at once. She used to have a map of the world on the wall of her cubicle at her job managing the offices of a small group of attorneys in Miami who shared the offices but were not really a firm. They just found it convenient and cheaper to have one office with two secretaries and one office manager that they occasionally forgot was an office manager and treated like a secretary and sometimes like a cleaning lady and always like someone who was somehow a lesser being than themselves because she only had an associate’s degree in accounting from Miami Dade College and didn’t attend some high and mighty state school like the U of F which was mostly notable for inventing Gatorade as far as she was concerned. She was sure they did other useful things aside from inventing tasty sports drinks and playing sports well, but she wasn’t really all that interested in it or in the people she worked for because they were mostly not very interested in her except for the things she was paid to do for them and the things they could get her to do that she was not specifically paid to do but did anyway to make sure that she kept her job. However, they would all take the most wonderful vacations all over the world and when they would come back, she would ask them about where they had visited and then place a tack on her map of the world with a color based on whether or not she would also like to go there. Henry Dominguez, who practiced a kind of personal injury law where people would come to him if they hurt themselves at their job and he would help them make even more money for not working even if they didn’t hurt themselves all that badly, liked to go on “adventures” as he called them. To him, the idea of driving around or seeing sights was, as he called it, “like death.” So he went on adventures to places like Costa Rica, which seemed like a really beautiful place to go with lots of things to do and see, and he wouldn’t sit on a beach and enjoy the wonder of the water. He would be off in the jungles on some kind of flying rope so that he could see the ground from the air going 35 miles per hour, which to Marisol seemed less about seeing the jungles and nature and more about flying around on a rope at 35 miles per hour and she knew there were places in the U.S. where you could do that too so she didn’t understand why he would need to go all the way to Costa Rica to fly around except so he could brag about going on an adventure to someplace exotic to Marisol. She would smile and enjoy the story and think about the places he went to and ask herself if they were worthwhile aside from the adventure parts. If it was a place like Costa Rica, which seemed a nice place to drive around and see sights, she would put a green tack on it as someplace she might bring up with Rick someday. If it was ice climbing in Banff, which Henry could never seem to pronounce properly even though he had been there, that seemed like an activity in a place that was awfully cold and uncomfortable and not much fun unless you liked being awfully cold and uncomfortable, she would give it a red tack as somewhere in the world she did not have any desire to visit. She knew her limitations and, more importantly, she knew Rick’s.
Rick was pretty clear after yesterday that Vermont was maybe a little too dangerous for them and if they wanted to be in the line of fire there were plenty of areas of Dade County that would do just fine for that. He didn’t need to drive a few thousand miles to feel like he could be the next one to go. And she didn’t disagree with him. All those poor people who died, people they met with and laughed with and made the kind of good connections she liked to think lingered on in the memories of everyone long after they were gone so that someday they might think of Miami or see a Winnebago drive by and think of Marisol and Rick and smile. But now people like that nice clerk, Gil, would think of them and remember the horrible day they drove into town and brought a hurricane with them.
So she looked at her map of New England and thought that they might avoid Salem, Massachusetts, even though she had a green tack for that one after hearing about all the fun and cheesy museums there. So many bad things had happened there and it would make her think of Stansbury and she really needed to not think of Stansbury as much as possible right now. She looked up at Maine and thought it might be nice go and look at the ocean because it was the same ocean she saw at home and she and Rick could have a lobster because he talked about eating a Maine lobster in Maine. He had this idea that they should visit places famous for their food and eat their food there so it would be authentic…he dreamed of eating arroz con pollo in Havana. That seemed like a nice thing to do. They might even look at a lighthouse or two, so long as they weren’t haunted.
She didn’t need any ghost stories right now either. She thought about Henry Dominguez and how he would have seen the last day as an adventure and if he had been through it all and come back to report it to her before asking her to fetch him a cup of coffee and run some copies. She would have probably put a red tack on Stansbury. She and Rick didn’t need adventures. They just wanted to drive around and see things that seemed worth seeing. So she programmed the GPS for Kennebunkport because one of the presidents lived there and if they were lucky they could see him.
“It’s time to go, honey.”
Rick looked up from his book. “Figured out where the next stop is?”
“Kennebunkport, Maine.”
“Doesn’t the first Bush live there?”
“I think so. Maybe we might see him.”
“Okay. So long as it’s the first one. I liked him and his wife with the necklace. I’d like to take a picture with them maybe.”
Rick made his production about setting himself up in his “Captain’s Chair” and making all his adjustments to all of the fancy gadgets and whatnots that this machine came with that Rick had gone on and on about how much they needed every last one of them when they bought it even though she knew it was all a show and he really would have been happy without any of it - except maybe his CB…he loved yelling into that box. He started it up and the GPS gave its first instruction, which would take them out of town past the little shop and the bridge and all those places where all those people had died. He started to reprogram it for an alternate route.
“Rick. Can we…” She was looking at those little damaged bridge models that the poor dead boy made. “I think I need to give those back to Gil. I can’t have... those and I don’t feel right throwing them away.”
He looked up at her and she could tell he really wanted to get out of town without revisiting all that pain. But he nodded anyway and left the machine alone. He pulled out of the rest area where they had parked for the night and headed back towards Gil’s shop. Aside from the one deputy sitting in his squad car, there was no one else out and about. It seemed like the entire town stayed inside wishing yesterday away.
Rick sighed quietly. “I’ve never seen a ghost town with people still living in it.”
With no more to comment on, there was only the sound of the GPS calling out where to turn and how close they were to the turn and then the turn and then how far to go before the next turn. And then the town was gone and then they saw the remains of the accident where the nice old sheriff had passed. There was nothing left there now but some caution tape wrapped around a tree and some flare scars on the road. Rick slowed down just a little to pay his respects, as he always did when they passed an accident scene. Then she could see the little shop up ahead and Gil sitting out front. There was a dog lying next to him and he scratched its head absently. Looking at him, she suddenly felt the sadness of the world and wished that they left town the other way and not looked back.
Lakebridge: Spring (Supernatural Horror Literary Fiction) Page 57