by Nancy Madore
Before dawn Carol came sleepily awake. It was still pitch-dark as she once again came to terms with her new surroundings. Harvey was already gone from their bed. She sat up, looking all around her as her eyes became adjusted to the dark. Memories of their lovemaking the night before rushed back to her and she smiled. She heard the toilet flush and realized she must have been roused when Harvey got up to use the bathroom. She lay back down on her pillow, happy and at peace.
She waited contentedly for Harvey to quietly make his way back to the bed. She was filled with desire for him all over again. He settled himself under the covers beside her, careful not to wake her. Carol snuggled up closer to him, delighting once again in the wonderful heat of him. Immediately his arms came around her, strong and gentle, and she felt her body yearning for him. She marveled over how wonderful it all was; that she could reach for him and he would actually pull her to him, or that she could want him and he would respond. She turned her face into his chest and kissed the warm, muscular flesh again and again, all the while feeling his heart drumming steadily beneath the surface with her fingers. His arms tightened around her. She tipped her head up toward his face and he, in perfect accord with her yet again, bent his head down toward her and touched her lips with his. To Carol, Harvey’s response was so incredible and exquisite and esteemed that it was almost painful to endure. She prayed the novelty and thrill of it would wear off just a little, before she lost her mind. Their kiss was lazy and affectionate but quickly becoming more passionate. Pressed up so close against Harvey, she could feel him growing hard against her. She slipped her hand down inside the band in his boxer shorts and grasped his growing hardness. Stroking him all the while, she brazenly turned her body on its side, facing away from him, and pulled up her nightdress while simultaneously pressing her bare bottom into the curve of his groin, wiggling around his hardness so that it settled in between her cheeks. Needing no further encouragement Harvey pressed himself into her soft wetness from behind, holding her firmly in his arms while he found his pace with her in this position. She lay on her side with her legs bent toward her body to accommodate him better. They had not exchanged a single word. Harvey took her swiftly and urgently this time, holding back only until she was satisfied and then releasing himself inside her with a groan.
Neither moved away afterward; they merely drifted back to sleep while still joined in the embrace of their lovemaking. Carol lay silently in Harvey’s arms, feeling truly safe and protected for the first time in her life. His warmth was almost overwhelming with the blankets over their bodies, holding the heat in, but she could not bring herself to move away from him. She would rather suffocate than move away. Yes, at long last this was where she belonged.
Several weeks later no one would have guessed that she had been through any kind of trauma at all when Carol stepped into the little café with a confident air, swishing her lovely curls this way and that as she looked around the room.
“Surely this can’t be the Carol I’ve come to know and love,” someone asked her from behind. She turned to see Mary laughing at her. “I don’t think in all the time I have known you, you’ve ever been on time!”
Carol laughed. “A near-death experience will do that to a girl.”
“You look amazing.”
“I feel amazing,” Carol responded happily. “Let’s get a table.”
Mary stared openly at Carol with an almost incredulous expression on her face. She seemed to sense something different about her.
“A Shirley Temple for me,” Carol told the waitress when they were seated. When Mary heard this her expression became one of genuine shock. Carol laughed. “I’m driving.”
“Of course,” said Mary. “You’re perfectly right.” Things seemed to be changing too quickly for Mary to comfortably absorb.
There was silence for several moments. Neither appeared to know exactly how to broach the subject that was uppermost on their minds. A palpable sadness hung in the air around them.
“I went to see Jane,” Mary said at last.
“Oh?” queried Carol, keeping her expression fixed. “How was she?”
“The same.”
“What’s going to happen to her?” Carol wondered halfheartedly.
Mary sighed. “I don’t know. I guess for the time being they’ll keep her in that place.”
There was another pregnant silence. Mary seemed to be struggling for the right words. “What on earth happened that night?” she asked at last.
“I have no idea,” Carol said, also carefully choosing her words. “I was so drugged up during that time it’s all kind of fuzzy,” she lied. “All I really remember is Jane freaking out.” She shuddered all of a sudden and that was genuine. She looked at Mary, repeating the account that she knew Mary had already heard from Harvey and the nursing staff. “She kept screaming that she was me, over and over again.”
“Did she say anything else?” Mary wanted to know.
“Not that I can recall,” Carol said, pretending to consider the question at length. She paused a moment and then asked in a casual tone, “Did Jane say anything to you?”
Mary shook her head. She had noticeably paled. “I do remember thinking she seemed a little overly interested in your recovery, but I had no idea she was so affected by what happened. I thought she was just being a good friend.”
“I feel responsible somehow.”
“How could you be?” Mary asked her soothingly. Then she added, “But I have to admit, if any of us was going to lose it, I never would have thought it would be Jane. I really thought she had it together.”
“I don’t think Jane ever confided in us about everything that was really going on in her life. I think she had more problems than she let on,” Carol said.
“Did you know she was on the verge of losing her business?”
“I had heard that afterward, yes,” Carol replied.
“It seems so strange without her here.”
“I know.”
Their drinks came then. Carol raised her glass. “To Jane,” she said. There were tears in her eyes, but they were tears of joy.
Mary touched her glass to Carol’s. “To Jane.”
DESPERATE DAN
Desperate Dan, the dirty old man
washed his face in a frying pan.
Claire walked into the shoddy little restaurant and tried to ignore that all eyes were on her. It was nerve-racking being the object of so much attention. She had never received so much as a second glance when entering a room back in Chicago, but here in this small town she was practically a celebrity. She was actually the first person to move to Anamoose, North Dakota, in over twelve years. None of the locals could believe she had done it. It was always the first question she was asked by the people she met: What on earth made you come here? Which meant she was asked it a lot, because even though it was a town of just over three hundred people, it was inevitable that she would meet every last one of them. She always answered the question with the same unwavering reply: that she preferred peace and quiet for her work, and furthermore—she would always add—she absolutely adored living in the country. This seemed to satisfy the askers, even though any one of them might have reasoned that there were plenty of quiet little country towns that were not quite so…bygone as theirs. Anamoose looked like a town that had been passed over and left behind, giving it a sense of eeriness that was just as tangible as the old, decrepit buildings that lined the streets. But if her questioners were at all skeptical of her explanation they never mentioned it to Claire. And she could hardly have told the plain-faced, straightforward inhabitants of Anamoose that her real connection with their town originated more than thirty years ago, when she was just a small girl learning to read and happened to come across the name Anamoose on a label on a jar of her favorite rhubarb jelly. It would have seemed strange indeed to have attempted to explain that she remembered the name all these years because, to the ears of the whimsical child she was back then, there was a pleasing ring to it that made i
t seem a kinder, friendlier place than the one she presently found herself in. She used to repeat the name out loud, again and again. She tried to imagine what a place called Anamoose would be like. Sometimes, when she was angry, she was apt to think, I shall go to Anamoose someday, and live happily ever after there. It was a childish fancy that carried over into a troubled adolescence and then stubbornly remained through adulthood, becoming by then almost a mantra to get her through difficult times. Like religious people look forward to ascending upward toward the heavens someday, so Claire always imagined going to Anamoose.
Even so, Claire never really believed she would ever go. As long as there was even the tiniest thread of hope that she might someday assimilate herself to the city where she was born and raised, she continued the struggle to exist there. But each time she came close to building any real ties, it seemed the fast-paced city of Chicago would metamorphose into something new altogether, leaving Claire behind to start all over again. Yet always there remained some small bond that was too hard won to simply walk away from. The deciding factor came at last when her fiancé, David, broke off their engagement. Theirs had been a convenient but shallow connection that impressed her more than anything else by its very existence, and it fizzled into nothingness with almost as little fanfare as the original proposal. But with that final blow Claire at last admitted to herself that there was nothing real to keep her there. And once the decision was made it was remarkably easy. There were no close friends to bemoan her leaving, and no other male admirers to pine over her. Even her mother had moved on and left Claire behind, sitting tranquilly by herself, day after day, in a tiny room at the full-care facility that housed her, having settled herself into a pleasant and mysterious place of her own making. There was hardly anyone for Claire to notify that she was leaving; not even so much as an employer to which she must tender her resignation. She worked from a small office in her apartment, for a company far away, who mailed her checks in exchange for completed manuscripts of newly updated textbooks. It was all very technical and Claire was proficient at it, so there was little communiqué necessary between the parties at all. Her landlord was the only person with whom she was obliged to discuss her move away from the city, aside from the post office. Her landlord seemed genuinely disappointed to lose her, complaining that she was the only tenant in the building who paid the rent on time every single month; whereas the postal employee she spoke to was much less affected, abruptly sending her to the self-serve desk where she could fill out a form and mail it back to them.
But to the residents of Anamoose, North Dakota, her life was a different matter entirely. Claire was received with a remarkable amount of interest by everyone she encountered, from the clerk at the market to even the men she passed working outdoors. And as for the employees of the Anamoose Post Office, they took down her information as if it was of the highest importance, and the postmaster himself filled out the little change-of-address card for her, going to great lengths to assure her that every piece of mail that was addressed to her would be delivered correctly and on time.
All this was frightening to Claire at first. Her distrustful mind could not help wondering what all the attention she was getting was going to cost, and she doubted that she would be able to foot the bill. She knew there was little that was particularly noteworthy about her and that in any other town she was more apt to disappear altogether into the woodwork. She realized that it wasn’t something extraordinary about her as a person that was causing the interest, but simply that she was a new face in the stale little town. And furthermore, her coming to Anamoose from the city suggested she must be chic and sophisticated, if not beautiful or charming. In time, she knew the novelty would wear off and she would become just like everyone else in the town, and this thought appealed to her. To finally belong somewhere and be known by the people around her was all she had ever hoped for. All of her previous relationships had been shallow and fleeting, leaving her to wonder if she even possessed the skills required to develop lifelong connections. But now, she believed and even knew that she would find those kinds of connections in Anamoose, just as she always dreamed she would from as far back as when she was a child.
During her weeks of notoriety, Claire’s presence never failed to trigger a response from the men she happened to encounter. Although she applied the same common-sense reasoning to this phenomenon, there was nevertheless something awakened in her from this new kind of attention that caused her no little distress and anxiety. She found herself longing for things she had spent years forcing out of her consciousness.
There was one man in particular who stirred more than the usual amount of discomfort with his curiosity over her. Claire guessed him to be in his early fifties, and felt he might have been attractive if not for the deep scars that covered his face and neck. The unsightly marks gave him a menacing appearance that bordered on frightening. Glassy blue eyes stared out intently from this homely visage with an expression that contained a combination of interest and humility. Claire was alarmed by the realization that she was never in the strange man’s presence when his blue eyes were not fixed on her. His interest seemed to extend much further than anyone else’s in the town, male or female. She wondered resentfully if he felt she was, in her own unspectacular way, a suitable match for him. She found herself painstakingly avoiding him.
It took only a few weeks for Claire to develop deeper ties within the sociable community of Anamoose than she had formed with the inhabitants of Chicago over a lifetime. One of these was with Maggie, who owned the Widow, the only restaurant in town. Claire was quickly becoming its most regular customer, being a terrible cook and discovering that she enjoyed the company of people when they actually took an interest in her. The atmosphere at the Widow was exactly what Claire might have imagined it to be, had she thought to create a friendly little restaurant in the town of her dreams. It was warm, lighthearted and loud. The first time she stepped into the place had proved to be a bit harrowing, as conversation had immediately stopped and all eyes had turned to look at her. But now when she came through the doors of the quaint little restaurant she was acknowledged with some hearty hellos and friendly nods of the head.
Maggie smiled warmly as Claire slipped onto a stool at the bar. The two had taken an immediate liking to each other. One reason for this was that Maggie was closer to Claire’s age than the majority of the women of Anamoose, who were either terribly old or extremely young. Maggie was just in her forties, and full of bright energy.
“How’s it going over there today?” Maggie asked cheerfully.
Claire sighed. “I’m having a few problems,” she said. This was the way most of their conversations began. Maggie was, for Claire, the Anamoose Information Center. She discussed the problems and difficulties she encountered with Maggie and trusted all of her advice. “The most pressing thing is that I have to get the water heater fixed. I turned up the temperature, like you suggested, but it’s only getting worse. The water’s barely even getting warm now.”
“Oh dear,” said Maggie. “I was afraid of that.” She gave Claire a small smile. “Looks like you’re going to need Dan.”
“Dan?” Claire tried to remember if she had met anyone called Dan.
“Yeah.” Maggie sighed. “He’s our Mr. Fix-it around here.”
“Where can I find him?” Claire asked.
“Look no further,” Maggie chirped. “Dan!” she called loudly over Claire’s shoulder, looking out across the room behind her.
Claire turned, following Maggie’s gaze to a back corner of the restaurant, and discovered glassy blue eyes staring intently at her. She was certain he hadn’t been there when she first came in. She turned back to Maggie, but couldn’t catch her eye.
“We need your services over here,” Maggie was saying to Dan.
“I don’t think…” Claire started to object in a low voice, but then closed her mouth when she realized that she didn’t know how to put into words her innate objection to the man.
&n
bsp; Dan approached them slowly, coming to stand behind Claire, slightly to the right of where she sat and close enough that she could feel his nearness. She turned awkwardly to meet his eyes and said with a stiff smile, “Hello.”
He nodded. Maggie introduced them, quickly going on to explain Claire’s dilemma with the water heater. She ended with, “When do you think you could get to it, Dan?”
Dan was silently thoughtful for a moment. Although Claire had turned away from him immediately after he had acknowledged her, she knew—she could feel—that his glassy blue stare had remained on her profile throughout Maggie’s explanation. She felt his eyes on her still. Her face burned as she waited for his reply. When he didn’t answer she turned to meet his blue gaze.
“I might be able to get over there tomorrow morning,” he said finally. His voice was quiet and low.
“Great!” Maggie raised her eyebrows at Claire. “That’s one down,” she said with satisfaction. “What’s next?”
In spite of the tension she felt, Claire laughed nervously. She wished fervently for Dan to go away. She could still feel his eyes upon her. She tried to pretend he wasn’t there, uncomfortably continuing her conversation with Maggie. “You wouldn’t know anyone who can type, would you?”
“Mmm…” Maggie tapped her chin with her finger. “I think Brenda does some typing…” Her voice trailed off as she thought about it.
Claire, meanwhile, concentrated on ignoring Dan and his intimidating stare. She felt him beside her and wondered why he didn’t go away. Her face continued to burn under the heat of his gaze. She tried unsuccessfully to concentrate on what Maggie was saying. She felt as if there was a constriction in her chest and struggled for breath. Suddenly unable to endure it a moment longer she turned toward him, not even certain of what she would do or say, but in the next instant she gasped in shock to see that he was no longer there. She looked anxiously all around her, but Dan was nowhere to be seen. She turned back toward Maggie on her stool. The heat in her cheeks was quickly cooling as the blood drained from her face. When had he left? How could she have felt him there so distinctly if he wasn’t there? She looked at Maggie. “Where did he go?”