Lilah

by Marjorie DeLuca

  She slammed the till shut. “Go get your newspaper done,” she said. “And look in on that pretty young Lilah. Word is she gives the best scalp massage anyone’s ever had. Marge Reid was in there yesterday. Said she almost fell asleep in the chair and she’s a bad insomniac. She’s going to hire Lilah to do all the hair and makeup for Shayla’s wedding in the spring.”

  Nick stepped out into the cloudy November day. It was warmer than usual, which meant the snow had turned to brownish slush. As usual, Lilah’s place looked busy. One woman lay back in the chair and Lilah stood above her, chatting and wielding the hairdryer. Others sat reading magazines, patiently waiting their turn. It hadn’t taken long for Lilah to get the business going. And once she got onto the wedding and prom circuit, that was a big deal. She’d probably have to hire an assistant.

  Shayla Reid was one of Nick’s earliest ex’s. She’d come back from college in Fargo and been promptly hired as a home ec teacher at the local high school. She was one of those natural blondes with endless legs and stamina. College had been a revelation after her quiet teen years in Silver Narrows, so she’d joined a sorority and become one of the types you see on those College Girls Go Wild at Spring Break videos. They’d dated for almost a year. She was a terrific cook, whipping up all kinds of casseroles and fricassees that they’d demolish along with a couple of bottles of wine. They’d skip dessert to make mad, frantic, love in front of the fire, on the back porch, on the kitchen floor – anywhere but the bedroom. She had a weird habit of whimpering like a wounded kitten when she reached a climax. He was crazy about her at first – even thought the kitten thing was cute. But after about eight months, it all began to grate on him. Then she started dropping major hints about marriage and babies.

  When they went to a June wedding together and she caught the bouquet, that sealed it. Her mission became clear. She was determined to become Mrs. Hendricks. The last straw was when she got them both tickets for some wedding expo in Minneapolis. Nick ran in the opposite direction. Even a standing rib roast with rosemary herb potatoes and garlic green beans couldn’t sway him. She became a major casualty of the Nick Hendricks rejection machine. His name was mud for a while.

  Luckily she hooked up with Jeff Kovac. Built like a linebacker, he was the Phys. Ed teacher at her school, and together they made this perfect blond, athletic couple. Finally Nick was forgiven. The Book Club decreed that Jeff was a way better match than Nick would ever have been, which stung a little. But after seeing the epic preparation going into their wedding for the past year, he could only feel a sense of relief. Nick’s idea of the perfect wedding – if it ever happened - was either barefoot on a Barbados beach or down by the lake on a midsummer evening. Shayla’s wedding was shaping up to be the major social event of the year and for sure they’d demand a center spread to cover it.

  Back at the office, Nick wrapped up next week’s edition of the paper and then turned to the boxes of archived material. They’d been neatly arranged in labeled boxes by his predecessor, a guy named Doug Lacey, whom he’d met only twice. Once during the interview and the other time was the day he took over the paper.

  It was a gorgeous fall day in late September. Nick arrived in town tanned and relaxed after a lazy summer spent at an old college buddy’s beach house near Malibu. It had been a last fling before getting serious about his career. Two whole months of surfing, partying and burning precious brain cells in the process, so when he’d arrived in Silver Narrows, he’d anticipated a gentle orientation period while Doug introduced him to the community and gradually eased the rudder of the Silver Narrows Sentinel into his trembling hands.

  Instead, all he found was a florid faced man with silver sideburns, a reddish topknot and a burning itch to get the hell out of the office and out of town as well. It took him about fifteen minutes to show Nick how much to feed the sad looking goldfish, how to handle the coffee maker and how to submit the newspaper file for publication. Then he disappeared down Main Street in a cloud of exhaust, his tires burning a black track on the road. He left behind a forwarding address, which turned out to be a post office box somewhere in Montana. Nick sent a couple of letters his way, but never heard back from him and guessed he’d simply disappeared into a blissful retirement.

  Nick learned more about Doug from the way he’d kept the Sentinel office. A stickler for detail, every copy of the paper put out in his thirty five year reign as well as the papers his predecessor had printed, were lovingly stored in triplicate. Files of background information, press clippings, handwritten rough notes from interviews, were all meticulously sorted and filed in the giant central filing cabinet.

  The first set of papers Nick checked through, dealt with the two earliest disappearances. First Tay Kerber, a troubled guy who’d been on the 1999 list of seniors not likely to graduate. Living with his single mom, Sonya, he’d made a name for himself as the main high school dope dealer and was number one on the list of local juvenile offenders according to ex- sheriff, Herb Brenner, Brad’s father.

  The grainy face that stared blankly out at Nick from the 1999 September 16th Sentinel, was a shaggy haired, white faced guy with hollow eyes and a pierced eyebrow. He’d disappeared during the first few weeks of school. A month later, Allie Lawson, a freckle faced, black haired eleventh grader had disappeared after an evening of poetry put on by the creative writing class. One of Allie’s verses appeared beside her photograph. It was a touching little piece that captured all her hopes for the infinite future that lay ahead of her – the words filled with youthful hope and a burning desire to make a mark on the world.

  I scatter my words like stars and set them on fire in the framework of my sky.

  Nick studied her wide eyed cheeriness and his heart shifted. Once he’d felt like her. Before the dark hand of reality wiped away his idealism. He shuddered, aware of hazy memories that hovered like noxious smoke in hidden corners of his brain. He pushed them away, focusing instead on Allie. He imagined her poring over her poetry journal as she searched for the perfect images. That filled him with the determination to at least commemorate the kids and maybe find a few answers in the meantime.

  Tay Kerber had been the one who apparently wrote the letter from Chicago. It seemed Doug Lacey hadn’t seen the letter because he simply included Herb Brenner’s summary that Tay had decided flunking high school wasn’t on his agenda, and he’d moved to the big city to pursue a career in the music business. Since the cops hadn’t uncovered a body or noticed any unusual circumstances, it was widely speculated that Allie had run off to join Tay. They’d been an item at school, both keen members of the Goth-inspired artsy crowd, so it seemed like the best explanation that they’d set out together in search of independence and adventure. Allie’s parents were quiet blue-collar types. Dad worked at a local sugar beet processing plant and Mom did some stints as a cashier at the local Wal Mart. Seems like they’d eventually given up looking for her and gone to live near relatives in Indiana. A handwritten note listed the dates of the three times Doug tried to interview them and was turned away at the door.

  Not everyone accepted the runaway explanation. A couple of the people interviewed – the school principal included – said Allie had been a happy girl with plans to graduate high school and head off to take drama at college. It didn’t make sense for her to take off without telling anyone. Nick silently agreed with her.

  He plugged both their names into Facebook and a few other social media sites. Both times nothing showed up. They were non-existent in the cyber world, which meant unless they were sleeping under freeway bridges or squatting in some burned out tenement in Chicago, they didn’t exist in the real world.

  He cut out thumbnails of the two of them, taped them on the first page of his notebook, then jotted down all the details he’d found. As his hand flew across the page it seemed like the scrawl of words surrounding those two pale faces had brought them back to life. It was the beginning of the most meaningful thing he’d created since his first published poem. And the longer
he stared at them the more he imagined they were looking back at him, urging him to dig deeper and find out the truth.

  6

  Nick was about to head out to Rusty’s place for a beer when Lilah’s black Mercedes swished through the slush and pulled up in front of the office. The window whirred down and she leaned across, her face a bright triangle in the shadowy interior. She wore a white woolen hat.

  “Wanna come see the house I’m going to buy?”

  “I don’t take rides with strange ladies,” Nick said, grabbing the door handle, “but I’ll make an exception this time.”

  He sank into the car’s expensive leather interior and stroked the dash. “Nice ride, but too bad you have to drive it in this shitty weather. A car like this is meant for Palm Springs or Malibu.”

  She pressed the gas and they sailed down Main Street. For a moment he slipped into that sense of unreality he’d felt whenever he was around her. Like he was in some movie and the soundtrack would start up any minute, filling the air around them. He pressed his fingertips into the leather just to reassure himself this wasn’t some crazy dream, and studied her profile as she concentrated on the road ahead. Those full lips glossed with pale pink lipstick, the slim straight nose with a tiny freckle above the right nostril, the arched eyebrows, the high cheekbones and the heavily lidded eyes. Exotic, feline, shimmering were all words he could use in a poem about her.

  “I should maybe get a four wheel drive truck,” she said, licking her top lip as she rounded a slippery bend.

  “Don’t get rid of this beauty. You’ll regret it,” he said, patting the high tech dash and the tiny silver skates hanging by a chain from the rearview mirror.

  “I used to do a bit of figure skating,” she said, her eyes focused on the road ahead. “Oh - by the way. You’re gonna love this place.” She stepped on the gas again. Nick noted the new little nugget of new information about her, but he had the distinct impression she wanted him to concentrate on the new Lilah. The person who’d arrived in Silver Narrows to begin again. So what, he thought, if he was to be part of her reincarnation he could live with it. And maybe she’d loosen up about the past later – when they got to know each other better.

  They headed in the direction of Ike Dewar’s place and Nick’s heart sank a little. He’d thought she might find a house close to his, so they could pop in on each other and borrow sugar or something. But the entire town of Silver Narrows spanned about three miles from start to finish, so everyone was close to each other. Though that had proved to be a curse after some of his messy breakups.

  They reached the west side of town where the Silver Lake shoreline began. The town had grown on the spot where the river flowed into the lake. Hence the name, Silver Narrows. Though the main body of the lake itself was vast, the opposite shore was visible at certain points. It was a deep lake. One of the deepest on the continent. Formed from the impact of a meteorite on the bedrock. As the town’s newspaper guy, Nick was deep into all the local trivia. Sometimes news was pretty thin, so a local interest story was enough to fill in any white space. Now, looking at the blackish expanse, he found himself thinking how difficult it might be to recover a body or bodies from almost 500 feet depth of water.

  Ike Dewar’s land took up a long stretch of lakeshore. Thick forests of paper birch, black spruce and Big Tooth Aspen fringed the shoreline. Nick had a thing about trees and usually did a monthly feature called “forest stories”, in which he jabbered about Minnesota’s indigenous trees, their history, the changing seasons and anything else he could dream up. He’d even developed a bit of a fan following, especially from the ladies in the Book Club.

  He told Lilah about it as they drove through a grove of snow covered birch trees that suddenly opened up on a wide field. “Ike Dewar’s farm,” he said. “I don’t like to badmouth people but keep your eyes wide open around that guy.”

  “Some bad history there?” she said, turning onto a track that led away from the field. Not too close to the jerk, he thought, breathing a little easier.

  “He’s a bully. You’ll meet his wife tomorrow.”

  “I’ve come across plenty of those types,” she said. “They turn up everywhere. Like a bad smell.”

  “That’s just the fascinating diversity of the human race. Not everyone can be a nice guy like me.”

  “I have a keen instinct for the good guys,” she said, turning to him with a sly smile, “and I can’t believe some cute girl hasn’t snapped you up.”

  “I guess I was just waiting for the right person to come along.” He swallowed, amazed he’d actually said something that smacked of commitment.

  “We’re here,” she said as the car glided into a driveway bordered by a wooden fence and shaded by towering spruce trees. At the end was a large, modern log house with a sloping chalet roofline, pine siding, stone-clad walls and huge stone chimney. Though real estate was reasonable in Silver Narrows, he calculated the lakefront property to be worth over half a million.

  A wooden staircase led up to the front door and, on instinct, he held onto Lilah’s arm as they climbed the snow covered steps. “Snow clearing might be a bit of a chore here,” he said.

  She scrambled upwards like an eager kid. “Ray already gave me a list of reliable guys. Hey – remember where I grew up. I know winter and all its warts.”

  She threw open the solid oak door to reveal a massive, open room. “This place belonged to one of the doctors from the local hospital.”

  “You know his name?”

  “Dr. Aaron Castle. He moved to Minneapolis.” She threw on a couple of lights. “You like it?”

  The place was impressive rather than cozy. High, timbered ceilings, wide-planked wood floors, massive stone fireplace with mantel and a wall of windows on the far side. He’d expected something on a much smaller scale.

  “It’s incredible,” said Nick, thinking of his boxy little cottage in the woods.

  Lilah held her arms out and whirled around, taking in every corner of the room. “And the place comes with all the furniture.”

  Nick checked out the massive brocade sectional, the camel leather reclining chairs, the solid oak tables and the rich Persian carpet. It was a decidedly masculine room and to him it seemed strange that the guy would leave so much quality stuff behind.

  She ran over to the big windows. “This looks out over the lake,” she said, her eyes shining. “In the summer I can head right out onto the dock and have a morning swim.”

  Off to the right was an updated gourmet kitchen with deep walnut cupboards and a granite countertop. Beside that, a cozy dining area looked out onto what was probably a breathtaking lake view.

  “I’m jealous as hell,” Nick said, touching her shoulder, “but I’m happy for you. I don’t know what troubles you’ve had, but this place might help you forget.”

  She turned and looked up at him. “I knew I had the right instincts about you, Nick. Your newspaper was a big comfort to me.”

  Nick gazed down at her lovely face, his fingers pinching at his leg to keep him grounded. “I can’t believe my pathetic little paper somehow managed to reach you out there in cyberspace.”

  “Not pathetic, Nick. You write with careful, almost loving detail about small town life here. As if it’s something to be treasured because all the little, comfortable traditions and rituals feed the heart of a living, breathing community like this.”

  Nick felt that same sensation of being choked up. He was feeling it a lot lately. “I- I can honestly say you’re the first person to make me feel so good about my job. I always had this feeling I was just playing at being a journalist.”

  “You’re a humble guy, Nick,” she said, tracing a finger along his chin. “And that’s what I like about you.”

  The moment was intense - unlike anything he’d ever experienced with the other girls. He didn’t need to say a word. Just gaze at her until her image was emblazoned in his brain. Then she pulled away so quickly his head felt light. “I’m gonna move in next week and yo
u’ll be my first dinner guest.”

  Nick imagined the two of them cuddled up by the blazing fire. “I’ll bring the champagne.”

  He followed her around in a daze, checking out the two guest bedrooms and the cozy master suite with its huge cedar bed. And all the time he couldn’t shake the feeling that this incredible girl had actually sought him out. That in some small way, his writing had touched her and maybe even brought her here.

  “I’d better get the keys back to Ray. He just loaned me them for the evening,” she said, interrupting Nick’s thoughts.

  When they pulled down the driveway, Nick made a mental inventory of all the details; the massive spruce tree that shaded the front veranda, the line of slim poplars fringing the parking area, the ornamental lamp next to the red mailbox. Images he hoped would become a familiar part of his daily routine.

  “You know Ray lives on the other side of Ike’s farm,” he said.

  “Yeah – he made sure we stopped by for coffee.”

  Great neighbours, he thought to himself. No wonder Dr. Castle got the hell out.

  “So when does the deal go through?” he asked, wondering how it was that the best land in town just happened to belong to the worst assholes.

  “Monday, if everything goes through as planned,” she said. “Then I can get the keys and start moving my stuff in.”

  “You know if you need a hand I’m….” Nick choked on the words as two figures dashed hand in hand into the road, frozen momentarily in the headlights. Lilah yanked the steering wheel sharply to the right, barely missing them. The car skated across the slick road, as she frantically tried to pump the squealing brakes. Nick braced his right hand on the dash and held out his left arm to shield her as the car thumped into the opposite snow bank. They jolted back, winded. Luckily she’d slowed down enough to just coast into the snow.

  “What the fuck was that?” yelled Nick, craning his head around to scan the darkened road. “And where the hell did they go?”