Hope Falls_Passing Through

by Frances Elliot

  On any other night, she would have taken a seat at the bar, chatted with people and very naturally included the stranger in the conversation. That’s how she normally behaved, that’s how everyone in town behaved. Instead, she’d scurried to a safe seat and stared at the menu she’d memorized about fifteen years ago.

  She had the eerie feeling he was staring at her and had to fight the urge to turn quickly and check. A slow flush crept over her entire body and it began to feel too hot in the room. David arrived, told her the storm seemed worse and then looked at her as he sat. “You feeling okay? Your face is kind of red.”

  After she’d calmed down, she consoled herself by thinking that at least she had some new fantasy fodder. Another of the things that depressed her was her inability to conjure up a satisfying partner, even in her daydreams or fantasies.

  Too old for movie stars or pop singers, she’d focused briefly on a passable-looking candidate for Congress in their district, imagining life as a political wife and wild sex in a staid office. But she couldn’t get anywhere with it at all, and gave up.

  Now she could lull herself to sleep thinking of hopping onto that guy’s motorcycle or into his pickup and heading off to Austin or Brooklyn, stopping every ten miles for more sex. Sex in roadside motels, lush pastures, hushed forests – were there any deserted beaches between Hope Falls and Texas, she wondered?

  “What’s wrong with you?” David was looking at her with concern. “Your face is red again.”

  Alice had to yank herself back to reality. “I’m fine, really. It’s a little warm in here, I think. Finish up so we can go home, okay?”

  She had indeed dreamt of the stranger that night, but it hadn’t been sex-on-a-tropical-island, or something else interesting. They’d simply been standing in an empty room they hadn’t known was part of the house they seemed to own. Disappointed, Alice contemplated a life where even her subconscious failed her and shuddered.

  Chapter Two – Saturday

  In the morning, she reached automatically for her weekend uniform – comfy jeans, oversized sweatshirt, sneakers -- then paused, realizing she’d begun to dress as though she’d given up hope. She resolutely pawed through the back of the closet, looking for a skirt that would swirl a bit when the bad boy swept her into his arms and onto the back of his Austin-bound Harley.

  As she dressed, she tried without much success to be realistic. The chances of running into that guy again were about a zillion to one and anyway, obsessing about some random stranger was silly. But she felt restless and twitchy, as if she’d forgotten something important. Might as well get moving, she thought, because it was a pretty safe bet Mr. Right wasn’t going to walk up and ring the doorbell.

  Telling David she had errands to run, she drove into town, parked at the end of Main Street and began to work her way up one side and down the other. She dawdled along, feeling foolish and acquiring several items of dubious utility because they had been displayed near windows, allowing her to watch the street while pretending to shop.

  She now owned a bundt cake pan (she didn’t bake), a pair of sparkly high heels (“Big occasion coming up, Alice?”) and a dozen packets of vegetable seeds (she knew nothing about gardening, but could tell the staff suspected she was a shoplifter). This wasn’t the absolute dumbest thing she’d ever done – at the age of six she had swallowed several large coat buttons at David’s urging – but it was pretty damn dumb.

  After a couple of hours, she’d lugged her curious haul into Sue Ann’s and had coffee at a window table. It was quiet in the café and Carol sat down to talk after refilling Alice’s cup. They gabbed a while and when they moved on to local gossip Carol asked if Alice had noticed a nice-looking bearded guy wandering around.

  “Not today, but maybe last night. You think he’s here visiting relatives or something? He didn’t look like a tourist to me,” Alice said.

  “Nah. He told me he was just passing through.”

  “You talked to him?”

  “Sure. Sue Ann said he was in for breakfast and he had lunch here, too -- sat right where you are, as a matter of fact, kept looking out the window. Left about five minutes before you came in.”

  Oh, come on. Alice thought she’d been so diligent she might have a future as a CIA operative. She was even a failure as a stalker, she thought. “He say how long he was staying in town?”

  “He didn’t say much of anything except ‘just passing through’ and ‘ham and swiss on rye.’ No wait – I take that back. He asked what people around here did on Saturday nights, where they went for fun. I told him we mostly stayed home or went to church.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah, and he believed me for a second, then he laughed and I told him people went to Collinsville or down to Tahoe once in a while.”

  Alice thought that over for a minute. “Carol, are you busy tonight?”

  ***

  It had taken a few hours for Ryan to grasp the notion that he had nothing urgent to take care of, nowhere particular to go, no calls, no texts, no obligations. He’d awakened at eight, showered and dressed with his usual efficiency, then checked out and asked at the desk about his breakfast options.

  They were limited, to say the least. Sue Ann’s, he was told, was a block and a half down, same side of the street, can’t miss it. So despite his doubt that it would be “the best breakfast he’d ever eaten,” Ryan stepped out into the brisk morning and paused on the wooden sidewalk.

  Even this early on a Saturday there were quite a few people strolling around and a fair amount of traffic moving along the street. An RV with Missouri plates and bikes of all sizes strapped to the back rolled past; Ryan smiled at the big yellow dog hanging its head out the window.

  As he walked towards the café, he noticed more out-of-state plates and a few people, clearly tourists, taking photographs. It seemed he’d stumbled into an area that others traveled to intentionally, and for the first time he took a good look around.

  This pleasant little stretch of road, predictably called Main Street, ran for only a few blocks. Lined with shops and offices, it was pretty without seeming artificially quaint. He passed the children’s shoe store he remembered and stopped.

  Stepping back, he looked over the building the girl had been leaving last night. Brick and clapboard, two stories tall, it seemed to contain only one business -- a small plaque near the door read “Spencer and Spencer, Attorneys at Law.”

  How extraordinary. He was Spenser with an “s.” Of course, she didn’t have to be one of the Spencers; she could be Rostokovich or McGillicuddy, the paralegal. She could have been a client or a friend. But somehow he felt that wasn’t so, and it rattled him.

  He found himself grinning as he imagined dating her and explaining with every introduction that no, they weren’t married yet, just a coincidence. Yet? Why had he thought “yet?” He shrugged and walked on.

  The restaurant was small but bustling and they were doing a pretty good coffee take-out business, too. He was served by the proprietress herself, an older woman who knew most of the customers by name.

  When he ordered coffee, fruit and whole-wheat toast, she’d given him a stern look, said “Surely not,” and turned away, ignoring his protest.

  A large bowl of oatmeal arrived with the rest of his order and it seemed churlish to ignore it. As he ate, he looked out the window and caught a glimpse of a blonde woman in a short skirt going into something called “The Cook’s Nook” across the street.

  Same girl? She’d been about the right height, and the hair was the right length, but that was all he’d been able to see. Except for the nice pair of legs, he thought -- he’d noticed those, too. He resolved to keep an eye on that door, just in case.

  But he didn’t see her come out. Perhaps he’d been distracted by the absolutely delicious oatmeal. Or maybe that was where she worked, not the law office at all. After he finished, maybe he should wander over, buy a gift or something. Sure, he could get his sister-in-law some sort of pan -- she was alway
s cooking, right?

  Fact was, wandering around this little town sounded like a fine idea. The two guys at the next table were having a friendly argument over which good fishing spot they should try today and Ryan realized there was no reason to hurry away from a place where everyone seemed so happy.

  Chapter Three – Saturday Night

  It had taken some convincing, but in the end Carol had agreed to a pub crawl in Collinsville. So Alice struggled into the jeans that someone had said made her butt look cute, put on some makeup and they set off to visit every bar, tavern, roadhouse and saloon they could find before they ran out of gas – both literally and figuratively.

  They’d hit the most popular joints first, all of them chock-full of people they already knew -- ex-boyfriends, cousins, former bosses and neighbors. Carol had run into her high school beau, who couldn’t wait to introduce her to his new wife. (“Dodged a bullet there,” Carol muttered.)

  Then they’d moved on to a few of the vaguely sketchy-looking places they usually avoided. One of them, a large cinder-block structure surrounded by an enormous parking lot jammed with vehicles, turned out to be loads of fun. Despite the sputtering neon sign announcing “The Luau Room” and a couple of battered tiki figures beside the door, it turned out to be a country-western place with pretty good live music.

  A spry old coot about eighty dragged Alice to the edge of the floor and patiently demonstrated the steps of a line dance until she caught on and they joined the crowd. Carol sat at the bar talking to a cowboy in a plaid shirt and fancy boots who turned out to be an accountant from Seattle.

  “Oh, we are so coming back here,” laughed Alice when they were finally back in the car. “That’s the most fun I’ve had in weeks.”

  “That accountant is taking me to brunch tomorrow,” said Carol. “So the evening hasn’t been a total loss, but what do you want to do now? I think we’ve been almost everywhere except the strip club and the bowling alley.”

  Alice made a face. “Well, I think I might have a little trouble catching his attention if he’s in the strip club, and the bowling alley – he’s definitely not the bowling type. I guess it’s time to head home, anyway.”

  ***

  It had been at least ten years since he’d bowled, and something about his technique seemed to be inciting laughter behind him, but damned if he wasn’t having a pretty good time, thought Ryan. He’d stopped in for directions after he’d passed Bowl City the second time and realized he was lost.

  He’d decided to stay for a beer and gotten talking with some people and then he’d shot a few games of eight-ball and the next thing he knew it was midnight and he was bowling with a pair of contactors and the truck salesman who’d cleaned his clock at the pool table.

  The image of the pretty blonde was beginning to fade a little and Ryan wondered if he’d imagined or over-emphasized his reaction to her. He’d seen her for certain only twice, for crying out loud. Sometime after lunch he’d spotted that woman with the great legs getting into a car at the far end of the block, but again, he didn’t get a look at her face.

  He didn’t regret the extra day he’d spent around the area, though -- he’d intended to take his time, see the sights, get to know himself again. The scenery was gorgeous; the people were friendly and fortunately or not, no one was anxiously awaiting his arrival.

  His bowling partners had asked him a few general questions but he’d learned long ago that if people asked what he did for a living, “I work with computers” was all he needed to say. Outside the Bay Area and a few other tech-centric bubbles, nobody, nobody wanted to hear more.

  And Ryan had forgotten how nice it was to listen to folks talk about something other than themselves and their work. His companions were fantasy baseball nuts and he found he envied their passion. He hadn’t followed baseball or any other sport since college and realized he missed the excitement of feeling deeply involved in something other than work.

  Charles the pool hustler was bowling an extra frame when Ryan felt a sudden, baffling urge to get moving. He managed some hurried goodbye-nice-to-meet-you platitudes, almost ran out to the parking lot and then sat behind the wheel, wondering what had come over him.

  It would seem even nuttier if he went back in, so he shrugged and started the ignition. With no memory whatsoever of the directions he’d been given, he pulled out and turned left, thinking he had a fifty percent chance of being correct.

  A mile or so along the road he recognized a bar he’d been in earlier and knew he’d chosen wrong. The light at the intersection up ahead had a large “No U-Turn” sign, so he figured he’d take whatever street that was, then find a spot to turn around and come back.

  He caught the red light and glancing idly over to the brightly lit gas station across the street, watched a young woman with an absolutely terrific ass walk into the mini-mart. As he made his turn, he realized that was the girl, his girl, the girl he’d been looking for all night, and nearly drove off the road.

  There was a lot of fast oncoming traffic, nothing but fenced pasture on either side, and nowhere, it seemed, to turn around. Ryan felt the universe was working against him and wanted to beat the steering wheel in frustration. At last he was able to reverse direction and he sped back, trying to calm himself.

  This was great, actually. He’d swing on in, just another guy getting some late-night gas, look surprised to see her, give her a wave, amble over to say hi, then lean her over the trunk of her car, yank her jeans down over that incredible ass and – okay, enough.

  The station was, of course, deserted, so he just cut through and headed back towards the bowling alley and what had to be the way to Hope Falls. They couldn’t be too far ahead of him, he thought, watching the speedometer. It briefly crossed his mind that since he couldn’t exactly run them off the road, catching up would be pretty useless -- but who knows? Maybe they had another stop planned.

  ***

  Alice had walked out of the mini-mart with a big paper bag in one hand and a hot dog in the other. “I’m eating my feelings,” she said getting in. “Want some chips?”

  “Mr. Wonderful just went by and turned west on Cranston.”

  “What?”

  “Your dream date drove by and turned at the light a couple minutes ago. Sorry, it took a minute to register.” Carol thought for a minute. “But now I’m pretty sure it was him.”

  “It couldn’t have been. Why would he be headed out there at this time of night?”

  Carol put the car in gear and started towards home. “Maybe he’s a cattle rustler. In a blue Volvo, so no one ever suspects. Can’t steal too many head at a time though, and it’s tricky getting them into the back seat.”

  Alice looked carefully at her friend. “You’re not drunk, are you? I can drive if you want.”

  Carol looked mildly offended. “I’ve had so many Cokes I’ll be up all night. No, I’m just sort of giddy, thinking what a strange night this has been.”

  They rode a mile or so in silence, except for the crunching of chips, until Alice said in a rather accusatory tone, “What do you mean, blue Volvo? He wouldn’t drive something like that. It must have been somebody else.”

  Carol blew out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know Alice, maybe he’s an undercover cop, maybe he bought it for his big new career as an Uber driver, maybe his vintage Mustang’s in the shop. Since when do you care what someone drives?”

  Alice had to mull that over for a half-mile or so. “I think I may be letting my fantasies get out of hand. For all I know, he’s a paper salesman with a wife and four kids and the Volvo’s his dream car, and I’ve concocted this absolutely ridiculous--”

  She shook her head. “No. I just know somehow. He’s … he does something interesting, and he’s single, and loony tunes as this sounds, I’m pretty sure he’s interested in me, too.” She was quiet for a moment. “So there.”

  “There yourself. And by the way, I don’t think you’re crazy.” She put on her turn signal. “We’re almost home. Where
should I drop you?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I thought you might want to stake out the hotel lobby until he comes back,” said Carol.

  “Ha-ha. I wouldn’t laugh if I were you, since it may come to that. You working tomorrow?”

  Carol reminded her of the brunch date; Alice wished her good luck and as they pulled into her driveway added, “You are absolutely the best for doing this for me – thank you.”

  “De nada, kid. Keep me posted.”

  Despite everything, Alice felt oddly buoyant as she walked up to the porch and started searching for her keys. She tried to pin it down and thought “confident.” That was it. She was feeling strangely confident that everything would work out the way it should, that very soon the pieces would start falling into place.

  ***

  Ryan sat in his car up at the corner with his forehead on the steering wheel. Well, it was now official -- he was losing his mind. Any minute he’d see the flashing blue lights of a cop car behind him and he’d have to come up with an explanation for lurking around a residential neighborhood at close to one am. On the other hand, now he knew where she lived, a fact he’d be able to dwell on in the comfort of his cell.

  Down at the far corner he could see the boundary of what looked like a park, and instantly his mind shifted back to amateur stalker mode. Tomorrow morning he could go for a little run at that end of the park, keeping her house in sight, and … thereby looking exactly like a crazed rodent in a too-small cage, he realized.

  He bounced his head against the wheel and tried to think like a normal human being. No. Tomorrow morning he would get up, have a quick breakfast, figure out how to get back to US 80 and get the hell out of town. He’d spent way too long – he stopped himself. With surprise, he realized he’d been in Hope Falls less than 36 hours. Why did it seem he’d been chasing this girl all his life?