She started looking for an outside phone box to call an operator for help or dial 911 and risk their wrath when she just asked directions. Then she came abreast of a long low building with a lit sign, raven lake lanes, and there were lights in the metal-framed window.
It was bigger inside than it looked from the lot. All the alleys were dark but one in which a man bowled while another hunched over a sort of lectern with a pad on it.
There was a small bar with a man with close-cropped red hair behind it arranging stemmed glasses in a pyramid. He heard the door and turned around.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for Lakeshore,” she said.
“Is that Lakeshore in Raven Lake?”
She nodded.
“I ask because every dinky, crapola town around here with a lake, and that’s every town, also has a Lakeshore. Lakeshore Street, Road, Drive, Terrace...” He had a scoop nose, red lashes, light eyes, and skin freckled solid except for a few raw-looking pink patches.
“If I sound bitter,” he said, “it’s because I am.”
“Hey, Mel, stop the bitching, already,” one of the bowlers called good-naturedly.
He lowered his voice. “Been stuck in this godforsaken backwater two years. Got this place from an estate just outta probate. Thought I got a real steal. Believed them when they said it was a nine-month season. What a sucker...” His light eyes sparkled. “Wanna buy a bowling alley?”
“Uh, no thank you,” Eve said.
“Of course you don’t. Of course you don’t wanna drive thirty miles to see a movie off season, and God forbid you wanna take your wife out to dinner. You got Bessie’s, where you can get ham and eggs for breakfast, eggs and ham for lunch, and ham-burger any time until two p.m. After that, it’s me here or Frank’s, and all we got’s cold sandwiches. Nine months, ha! Place’s dead as my Aunt Fanny’s Studebaker from October to December, and from March to July.”
The ball racketed down the alley, pins clattered, and the voice of an invisible woman called, “Okay, gentlemen, that’s it.”
“Oh, my God,” the bartender moaned. “That’s it. Not even eleven on a Friday night, and that’s it. In Albany we’d just be getting warmed up. You wouldn’t be from Albany by any chance?” he asked longingly.
“Connecticut,” she said. “Bridgeton, Connecticut.”
“Sounds like another dink town, if you’ll forgive me.”
“I guess it is,” she said. “But it’s only eighty miles from New York.”
“New York’s the Devil’s asshole,” he snorted. “Long drive here from Connecticut?”
“About four hours.”
“Well, your journey’s almost over,” he said kindly. “Lakeshore’s three miles from here.”
Three miles.
Journeys end in lovers’ meetings, she thought. It was a phrase from a schoolgirl poem or one of the Gothic romances she’d read when she was young. She was in no condition for a lovers’ meeting; she felt grubby, her hair was a mess, she needed a toilet.
“Can I use the ladies’ room?”
“’Course. Right through there, first door you come to. I’ll give you directions to Lakeshore when you get back.”
The ladies’ room was small, clean, and chilly.
She used the toilet, washed at the little sink, and dried off with the rough brown paper towel. Her hair was tangled from the wind blowing through the car window and she wet it down and forced the comb through it. The circles under her eyes were almost purple by now, and her eyes were bloodshot from the glare of oncoming headlights. Even so, she looked better—younger and more like herself—than she had in weeks.
“Three miles,” she whispered to the mirror, then went back to the bar. The alley was dark; the bowlers had on windbreakers and were zipping their bowling balls into padded bags. Through the window, she saw the outside lights flicker off.
The men called good night to the bartender, nodded at her, and left.
“Want me to write the directions?” he asked her.
“Are they complicated?”
“Not at all. Just go out here, turn left, then bear left at the fork in the road about a mile up; keep going until you get to the lake. Looks like the road ends, but it doesn’t. It’s a T, and the road goes all the way around the lake except for a swampy patch you need a jeep to cross. But I assume you won’t have to go that far.”
“I hope not,” she said.
“Okay, you get to the lake. To your right is Frank’s Roadhouse. Definitely not a snazzy place. To your left is Lakeshore. There’s no other roads, no nothing but mailboxes and driveways, houses and the lake. It’s a gorgeous lake, lady. They call it Raven Lake because it looks black except in high summer when it turns the most amazing shade of gray blue you ever saw. Yeah, Raven Lake almost makes it worth living in this shit-kicking backwater—forgive the language. Raven Lake’s got pike and trout, even some muskie. None of your little pan fish in Raven Lake. A he-man’s lake...”
He loves this place, she thought suddenly, really loves it, and all the bitching and moaning is an act. She smiled at him, he smiled back and wished her luck.
The full moon was high; she almost didn’t need headlights. She bore left at the fork and the road headed dead for the moon; then the moon and road seemed to bleed together into a long, rippling, confusing streak, and she slowed up, crept forward, and came to the lake, or what looked like a cove of the lake. To the right, strands of red and green neon blinked about a quarter of a mile away... Frank’s Roadhouse. To her left, the road ran along the lake and into the trees. She turned left, passed a reedy hump of land making a small causeway across the neck of the cove, and then the black expanse of Raven Lake, cut by a rippling streak of moonlight, opened beside the road.
It was about a half mile across, with lights from scattered houses winking through the trees on the other side. Near shore was reedy, like the cove, and she heard peepers call and the plop of fish in the water.
The first mailbox she came to had the number 10 on it in beaded silver numbers and a driveway next to it rising up to a treed ridge from the road. As the numbers increased, the mailboxes got sparser. At number 210, the car heaved off the pavement onto graded gravel and she dropped her speed to twenty so gravel wouldn’t spit up from the tires and nick the car. About half a mile later, she came to 300, the number her mother-in-law had written down for her.
Her hands trembled on the wheel; sweat popped out along her hairline. If she had any sense, she’d go back, find a motel, get a night’s sleep, a good breakfast, and come back in the morning, fed, rested, calmer. But she was so close, she had to see him; she turned in and drove through a stand of birch and maple mixed with spruce. She smelled woodsmoke, then saw a break in the trees ahead and, a second later, pulled into a clearing with a small, neat, pretty house backed by the lake. She pulled around and stopped in three-quarter profile to the house. It had a stone chimney, front porch, and casement windows. Smoke came out of the chimney, the downstairs windows were lit, and she heard movie music. He was awake, watching a movie on TV. She reached for the ignition key and the porch light came on. The door started to open and her heart gave a giant thud that made her lightheaded because it suddenly hit her that he might not be alone. He was handsome and separated, he had normal appetites, and there was no reason on earth for him not to bring a woman home. She jammed the clutch in, grabbed the gear-shift knob so hard her hand cramped. If she saw any sign of someone with him, she’d shove the car into reverse and back down the driveway fast, trying not to smash her pretty car into a tree. The door swung in and his figure appeared in the rectangle of light. She couldn’t see his face, but recognized his height, the shape of his head and shoulders. He must have heard the car and come out to see who was visiting at this hour. He’d never seen the LeBaron, wouldn’t know it was her.