Foreign and Domestic

by Scott Blade

It rained and rained on him while he crossed over Mercer Island along the I-90 expressway. As he crossed over the bridge, the rain pelted him to the point that he entertained the idea it held a grudge against him. It was so hard that at one point he actually feared he might get swept over the railing and into the waters of Lake Washington. And even then he might not get as wet as he had been while walking in the rain.

  Cameron didn’t like to swim. In fact, he hated it. He had never been much of a swimmer. He could do it, but he was a far cry from winning any gold medals. The last time he had gone swimming was in a lake way back in Mississippi. It wasn’t something he’d wanted to do, and it certainly hadn’t been for fun. He had jumped from a plane and landed in Jarvis Lake. He still remembered the water current sucking him and pulling him under. The terrifying feeling of the water filling his mouth and throat. The cold water rushing through his lungs. This wasn’t an experience Cameron wished to reenact. No way. He was not a fan of water.

  And he certainly didn’t want to relive the fiery ball that had whipped out of an explosion far above him from a seaplane. Nor did he want to relive the death of a friendly old guy he had liked immensely. Cameron thought of Hank and Link, the border Collie. He wasn’t the kind of guy who carried regrets. It wasn’t in his DNA. Not like most other people.

  Regret killed.

  Tramping through the hard rain was no time to think about the past, so he shook off the memories and soldiered on.

  When he finally arrived in the city, he had to find a place to go. The rain had hammered him for the better part of an hour. Cameron figured that it was best to get indoors—fast—and dry off before he caught cold or got pneumonia or worse. He walked and searched for a coffee shop or a small diner or a café or a restaurant or a bar or some place to go in and sit down, but Seattle wasn’t a forgiving city. Not in his experience so far. No one took pity on him just because he had been caught in the rain, no matter how badly he was drenched or how brutally it had thrashed him. The people here lived their lives in the rain. Everyone had been caught in the relentless, hammering rain, and far more than their fair share. So why would they help a drifter? That’d be like a native of the Sahara Desert giving him water. What for? He was the one who’d come to the desert in the first place. He should’ve been prepared.

  All the coffee shops and diners and cafés that Cameron came across had customer-only policies written in bold letters on signs stuck to the insides of their front windows, which meant that no one could wander in off the street and stand around and loiter. At least that was his experience on his first several attempts to do just that to get dry.

  Cameron hadn’t intended to loiter, but it made no difference because every place that he entered was crowded. Wall-to-wall. Not an empty space or a booth or table or even counter space where he could stand. Apparently, everyone was trying to do the same as he.

  No way was he going to find a seat. He gave up trying at a Starbucks and came across a knockoff called Coffeebucks. Through the window, Cameron saw that the place even had the same kind of decor as a Starbucks—dark wood and lowlighting in every corner. He went in even though the place was so packed full of people it was dangerously close to being a fire code violation. He figured he could at least nudge his way through the people to stand in a corner and dry off. Maybe he could take his place in the long bathroom line and pretend. But before he even made it past the foyer, a guy in a yellow shirt and yellow tie and a shiny, gold nameplate that read “Jordan” asked him to leave.

  Jordan had pushed his way through the crowd quickly and with little regard for manners. He approached Cameron like a pit bull on steroids. The guy had no qualms about Cameron’s size or scary looks. He told Cameron that the place was at capacity—emphasizing the word capacity—and they didn’t cater to the homeless.

  Cameron could’ve argued that he wasn’t homeless, but the truth was that he was—technically. But that wasn’t what the guy had meant. He had meant no beggars. No undesirables. And Cameron was as about as undesirable to a business as a mosquito was to a blood bank.

  One of Cameron’s most recent and discouraging discoveries was that there were quite a few places that lawfully broke the first amendment on a regular basis—in principle that is, and in Cameron’s humble opinion. The first amendment guaranteed the right to free assembly. The idea of municipalities being able to thwart undesirables through legal means seemed to counter the first amendment in Cameron’s mind. But they did, especially in southwestern towns. Cameron had discovered that southwestern towns had a larger homeless population than other places. At least, that was how it appeared. He figured the reason was because the homeless migrated west. And he figured the reason for this migration was due to two factors.

  The first was that weather in the southwest stayed warm most of the year, especially in the deep southwest. Take San Diego, for example. The weather there never seemed to change. They had early summers and temperatures that remained in the late sixties in the winter, and that was about as cold as it got. Not always the case, Cameron was sure, but it was for the most part.

  The second reason he figured homeless people moved southwest was because of the desert landscape. Desert climates meant little rainfall. A homeless person by definition is someone with no home. No dwelling. No roof over his head. It was easier to sleep outside when you didn’t have to worry all the time about rain and waking up with pneumonia and so on.

  But none of these reasons applied to Seattle. It wasn’t a desert location, and it certainly wasn’t a place lacking rain. But who the hell was Cameron going to argue these points with?

  Not Jordan. And certainly not with any law enforcement officials Jordan would’ve called if he did argue. He didn’t want trouble, and Jordan looked like the kind of dog who was all bark and no bite, which meant he’d call the cops to do his biting for him. It wouldn’t have surprised Cameron if Jordan had one of those chains around his neck with a police call button centered in the center of a plastic medallion. All he’d have to do was to squeeze it, and the cops would come running.

  Cameron had been in the same clothes for two days—a drab green, long-sleeved cotton shirt and brown cargo pants. He had picked up the outfit in west Los Angeles and had worn it for so long because he liked it. It had been cleaned once.

  He had washed his clothes at a good-looking older woman’s house that morning.

  ON THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY, he had only been picked up once by a lonely driver. It was near, but not too near, the city of San Jose. Cameron had met an older woman named Karen, driving a well-kept green 2000 Jeep Cherokee. She had been peculiar at first, sort of standoffish but friendly. She wasn’t an older woman in the sense that she was old. She was older in the sense that she was older than Cameron. Then again, many women in the world were older than Cameron. He was in the middle medium of the world’s population of adults, and more than half of the world’s population were women.

  Karen had long red hair, slightly curled and wavy like a young Julia Roberts, but Karen had looked nothing like Julia Roberts. Not that it was a bad thing because she was a beautiful woman only in a different way. Fair skin. Green eyes. Stunning.

  Karen had another interesting characteristic—she was missing two fingers on her right hand. Index and middle finger were gone like they never existed. No nubs. No stumps. Just nothing but flat skin. Probably grafted over whatever crater had been left by whatever caused her to lose those fingers.

  Cameron didn’t stare. Didn’t give it a second thought.

  She had shown some interest in him. Perhaps she really liked the fact that he didn’t stare at the place where her fingers used to be. Perhaps she liked the fact that he was interesting. As soon as they started talking, they clicked in a way he hadn’t clicked with a woman in a good while.

  Cameron liked her, and she liked him, and the attraction was mutual and immediate. She invited him to dinner about as fast as he’d ever been invited to anything before—a home-cooked meal, she promised. This tempted Cameron be
cause he couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a home-cooked meal and with a beautiful woman to boot. It was most definitely the definition of an offer he couldn’t refuse.

  Cameron had been on the road a while and didn’t mind a stay in one place for a day or two. He accepted Karen’s offer.

  Karen wasn’t a gourmet chef by any means, but the meal was good, and Cameron was satisfied. After they got to talking some more, she asked him a lot of personal questions. He answered as many as he was comfortable with, which was to say not that many.

  Karen, however, was a different story. She was an open book. She told him everything about herself, not that Cameron minded. Being on the open road can be lonely sometimes, and hearing about someone else’s life every once in a while wasn’t a bad thing. In a way, it helped to rejuvenate the spirit. Humans are social creatures by nature, after all, and Cameron was no different.

  She had talked about her life and her upbringing in Utah and her college years and her college boyfriend and how she couldn’t wait to come out and live in LA. She had wanted to be in movies and she could’ve been. That was Cameron’s assessment, not that he was any kind of casting agent or director or whatever they were called, and not that he had the first clue as to what a casting agent or director would look for, but Karen was a good-looking woman. She had a lot of character in her face. And if any of the stereotypes about beauty in Hollywood were true, then certainly Karen would’ve fit the bill.

  “Especially when I was young and beautiful,” she had said.

  Cameron said, “You’re still young. And beautiful.”

  She smiled.

  She had gone on to tell him that her husband had died a few months earlier. Car accident. She had been in the car but got away with her life, a few cuts and bruises, and the loss of her two fingers.

  Cameron stayed quiet.

  She went on and talked about her married life that had lasted for twenty years and said that she was still getting used to single life.

  Cameron stayed quiet.

  “What about you? Why’re you out here?” she asked him.

  “I’m wandering. Going no place in particular. Not really. I’m kinda like a tourist.”

  He didn’t want to explain his quest to find his father even though she had been so open with him. Cameron used to be more open with strangers about his life, but the more he lived as a drifter, the more he decided to keep certain things to himself—a simple matter of trust and, perhaps, shorter and smaller amounts of human interaction had closed him off to people and made him feel more independent. Whatever the reason, Cameron didn’t see it as a problem.

  “A drifter? That’s a lonely life.”

  Cameron said, “I like it.”

  Silence fell between them.

  “Do you want to stay the night?”

  “I don’t want to impose.”

  “It’s getting late. Where else will you go?”

  “Motel.”

  “No way. Stay here.”

  She paused a beat, and then she said, “I mean, you can stay with me. In my bed. Won’t you?”

  To this question, Cameron had no answer but yes. He really did find her attractive, and he had been out there on the interstates and highways for a long and lonely time. He was ready for a warm, comfortable bed. And in Cameron’s opinion, spending a night with a beautiful woman was far better than sleeping in a dirty motel somewhere all alone. No matter what her intentions were.

  No contest.

  So Cameron spent the night. They did all the things that he knew his father must’ve done from time to time.

  All of them.

  Chapter 12

  THE NEXT DAY, CAMERON DECIDED TO STAY one extra night with Karen. Which was something he wasn’t accustomed to doing, but he did it anyway, and they had a good time. Dinner for two. Wine for her. Coffee for him. And conversation. Lots of it. Later, they were naked and in her bed for the second night in a row. And for the second night in a row, they enjoyed each other’s bodies.

  She ran her long, willowy fingers across his chest in a long, stroking motion like she was feeling a brand new paint job on a car. He briefly felt the icy cold from the metal on the wedding ring she may not even have realized she was still wearing months after her husband had died.

  She said, “I like your body.”

  And that was it. She said nothing else. And for a moment, he thought of his father’s scars. From his mother’s description in her notes, Jack was covered in them. His abdomen, in particular, bore a nasty scar from a terrorist bombing in Beirut outside of an army base. His old man had been hit with human shrapnel, a piece of another human being had been lodged in his gut.

  This thought quickly faded away after Karen took off her bra, leaving only panties on her aptly curved body. She had pale skin that felt like satin. Cameron touched her, as any sane man would.

  Karen was older, sure, but no man his age—or any other age for that matter—would’ve been able to keep his hands off of her. She was incredible without her clothes. A woman who should always be naked in Cameron’s opinion. Beautiful breasts. Magnificent waist.

  Cameron spanned his hand across it as she leaned in over the top of him to kiss him. And kiss they did. It was one of the longest kisses Cameron had ever had. She took his lips into her own. Their lips intertwined until they were wet and he couldn’t tell his from hers. Truly he had made the right decision in staying an extra night.

  They traded places, and he rolled on top of her. He reached down and slipped her underwear off. Slowly. She helped by scooching her legs slowly up and then back down. Then they moved into arenas far away from kissing.

  And another night passed.

  THE NEXT MORNING, KAREN WASHED his clothes for him while he slept. She left them in the dryer and cooked breakfast. Eggs. Ham. Toast.

  Cameron was a happy person by nature, and the last year he’d spent out on the open road, he’d found a kind of peace. But right there, in Karen’s small breakfast nook, he felt happy. It was a taste of the normal life. A man and a woman get together. Live together. Perhaps raise a family together. It wasn’t that bad, but then Cameron started to look down the long tunnel of that prospect, and he saw a narrow, unchanging, unexciting future that didn’t entice him. And he saw himself growing old and boring and always staying the same, and then the worst fear hit him. That fear wasn’t represented in a bullet, a bomb, a knife, or cancer, but it was represented in a single word.

  Complacent.

  He saw a complacent life ahead of him if he settled for a situation like this. And he decided it was better to keep moving. He just didn’t have the heart to tell Karen, not yet. But she ended up doing it for him. At breakfast, she told him that her college-aged son was coming home, and it was best if Cameron was gone before he got there.

  Cameron wasn’t sure if she was telling the truth about her son or not. There were no signs of a son in her house. No family pictures. No sports trophies. No extra kid’s bedroom. No clothes. No extra space in the garage for a car, but then again, he hadn’t gone snooping through her house and wasn’t sure what all there was in the other rooms. His were just observations he had made from what he had seen.

  It didn’t really matter either way to Cameron because he was ready to move on. Constant forward movement was his first desire—like nature beating a drum that only he could hear.

  Finding Jack Reacher had become his second, and both required him to put one foot in front of the other, step out of Karen’s front door, and get back onto California’s freeways. And he did. They said their goodbyes, and he continued on from her neighborhood.

  AFTER HIKING A WAYS UP THROUGH COASTAL CALIFORNIA, Cameron had come across a bus station and decided to take a bus. He rode to Sacramento and then bought another ticket to Eugene, Oregon and then another to Spokane, Washington.

  He watched out of the window as the bus drove, forgetting all about Karen for the moment. He observed the highways and freeways. Admired the mountains of Northern California and
the majestic trees of Oregon. He slept on the way to Spokane for a spell, just rested his head back on his headrest and shut his eyes.

  He woke up moments before the bus arrived, then disembarked and, having no real desire to go, but no real desire to not go, decided to try out Seattle as his new destination. He figured that since he was already over that way, and it was a famous city he’d never seen, why not? From the bus station in Spokane, he caught a ride from a friendly young guy about Cameron’s own age. They rode most of the way, but then the guy’s truck had some major engine trouble—smoke tittered out at first and then heaped out in huge patches. They had to pull over.

  The guy called his brother to come pick him up. The brother lived in Redmond, Washington. He came, and they offered Cameron a ride, but they were heading back to Redmond to get their mechanic friend to come out with a tow truck to pick up the broken-down car. Cameron didn’t like to go backward. Not his thing. Like gravity, he was pulled in one direction—forward—so he resumed hitchhiking again.

  No one stopped to pick him up, and then the rain started. The walk from Redmond to Seattle took five hours and forty-five minutes. Now that he was in the city, he desperately wanted to get out of the rain.

  After trying several places, Cameron had finally found himself in Coffeebucks, where he had met the paltry, little gatekeeper with the nametag that read “Jordan.”

  After their interaction, Cameron left the Coffeebucks Coffee Shop and walked down the street, the rain hammering down at a slant and striking him repeatedly on the cheek as he searched the area for a place to shelter. Soon, he saw one of those Internet cafes, a thing he had thought was dying away. And by the looks of it, he was right because even in the pouring rain with people trying to get under cover, no one was inside the cafe. From the street and through the windows, the place looked barren. It was like a computer graveyard.

  Cameron went to the entrance and entered. He shook himself off, which must’ve made the guy behind the counter visualize a mutt coming in from the rain and shaking its dingy, wet fur everywhere. He looked at Cameron with an expression of hospitality and awkwardness.