“It’s all right,” Travis said. “Shall we go?”
“Sure. I’ll get my purse.” She closed the door in his face.
There was an uncomfortable silence between them while they drove to the restaurant. Typically, this would be the time for trading life stories, but Jenny had resolved not to talk about her marriage, which closed most of her adult life to conversation, and Travis had resolved not to talk about the demon, which eliminated most of the twentieth century.
“So,” Jenny said, “do you like Italian food?”
“Yep,” Travis said. They drove in silence the rest of the way to the restaurant.
It was a warm night and the Toyota had no air conditioning. Jenny didn’t dare roll down the window and risk blowing her hair. She had spent an hour styling and pinning it back so that it fell in long curls to the middle of her back. When she began to perspire, she remembered that she still had two wads of toilet paper tucked under her arms to stop the bleeding from shaving cuts. For the next few minutes all she could think of was getting to a restroom where she could remove the spotted wads. She decided not to mention it.
The restaurant, the Old Italian Pasta Factory, was housed in an old creamery building, a remnant of the time when Pine Cove’s economy was based on livestock rather than tourism. The concrete floors remained intact, as did the corrugated steel roof. The owners had taken care to preserve the rusticity of the structure, while adding the warmth of a fireplace, soft lighting, and the traditional red-and-white tablecloths of an Italian restaurant. The tables were small but comfortably spaced, and each was decorated with fresh flowers and a candle. The Pasta Factory, it was agreed, was the most romantic restaurant in the area.
As soon as the hostess seated them, Jenny excused herself to the restroom.
“Order whatever wine you want,” she said, “I’m not picky.”
“I don’t drink, but if you want some…”
“No, that’s fine. It’ll be a nice change.”
As soon as Jenny left, the waitress — an efficient-looking woman in her thirties — came to the table.
“Good evening, sir. What can I bring you to drink this evening?” She pulled her order pad out of her pocket in a quick, liquid movement, like a gunslinger drawing a six-shooter. A career waitress, Travis thought.
“I thought I’d wait for the lady to return,” he said.
“Oh, Jenny. She’ll have an herbal tea. And you want, let’s see…” She looked him up and down, crossed-referenced him, pigeonholed him, and announced, “You’ll have some sort of imported beer, right?”
“I don’t drink, so…”
“I should have known.” The waitress slapped her forehead as if she’d just caught herself in the middle of a grave error, like serving the salad with plutonium instead of creamy Italian. “Her husband is a drunk; it’s only natural that she’d go out with a nondrinker on the rebound. Can I bring you a mineral water?”
“That would be fine,” Travis said.
The waitress’s pen scratched, but she did not look at the order pad or lose her “we aim to please” smile. “And would you like some garlic bread while you’re waiting?”
“Sure,” Travis said. He watched the waitress walk away. She took small, quick, mechanical steps, and was gone to the kitchen in an instant. Travis wondered why some people seemed to be able to walk faster than he could run. They’re professionals, he thought.
Jenny took five minutes to get all the toilet paper unstuck from her underarms, and there had been an embarrassing moment when another woman came into the restroom and found her before the mirror with her elbow in the air. When she returned to the table, Travis was staring over a basket of garlic bread.
She saw the herbal tea on the table and said, “How did you know?”
“Psychic, I guess,” he said. “I ordered garlic bread.”
“Yes,” she said, seating herself.
They stared at the garlic bread as if it were a bubbling caldron of hemlock.
“You like garlic bread?” she asked.
“Love it. And you?”
“One of my favorites,” she said.
He picked up the basket and offered it to her. “Have some?”
“Not right now. You go ahead.”
“No thanks, I’m not in the mood.” He put the basket down.
The garlic bread lay there between them, steaming with implications. They, of course, must both eat it or neither could. Garlic bread meant garlic breath. There might be a kiss later, maybe more. There was just too damn much intimacy in garlic bread.
They sat in silence, reading the menu; she looking for the cheapest entree, which she had no intention of eating; and he, looking for the item that would be the least embarrassing to eat in front of someone.
“What are you going to have?” she asked.
“Not spaghetti,” he snapped.
“Okay.” Jenny had forgotten what dating was like. Although she couldn’t remember for sure, she thought that she might have gotten married to avoid ever having to go through this kind of discomfort again. It was like driving with the emergency brake set. She decided to release the brake.
“I’m starved. Pass the garlic bread.”
Travis smiled. “Sure.” He passed it to her, then took a piece for himself. They paused in midbite and eyed each other across the table like two poker players on the bluff. Jenny laughed, spraying crumbs all over the table. The evening was on.
“So, Travis, what do you do?”
“Date married women, evidently.”
“How did you know?”
“The waitress told me.”
“We’re separated.”
“Good,” he said, and they both laughed.
They ordered, and as dinner progressed they found common ground in the awkwardness of the situation. Jenny told Travis about her marriage and her job. Travis made up a history of working as a traveling insurance salesman with no real ties to home or family.
In a frank exchange of truth for lies, they found they liked each other — were, in fact, quite taken with one another.
They left the restaurant arm in arm, laughing.
15
RACHEL
Rachel Henderson lived alone in a small house that lay amid a grove of eucalyptus trees at the edge of the Beer Bar cattle ranch. The house was owned by Jim Beer, a lanky, forty-five-year-old cowboy who lived with his wife and two children in a fourteen-room house his grandfather had built on the far side of the ranch. Rachel had lived on the ranch for five years. She had never paid any rent.
Rachel had met Jim Beer in the Head of the Slug Saloon when she first arrived in Pine Cove. Jim had been drinking all day and was feeling the weight of his rugged cowboy charisma when Rachel sat down on the bar stool next to him and put a newspaper on the bar.
“Well, darlin’, I’m damned if you’re not a fresh wind on a stale pasture. Can I buy you a drink?” The banjo twang in Jim’s accent was pure Oklahoma, picked up from the hands that had worked the Beer Bar when Jim was a boy. Jim was the third generation of Beers to work the ranch and would probably be the last. His teenage son, Zane Grey Beer, had decided early on that he would rather ride a surfboard than a horse. That was part of the reason that Jim was drinking away the afternoon at the Slug. That, and the fact that his wife had just purchased a new Mercedes turbo-diesel wagon that cost the annual net income of the Beer Bar Ranch.
Rachel unfolded the classified section of the Pine Cove Gazette on the bar. “Just an orange juice, thanks. I’m house hunting today.” She curled one leg under herself on the bar stool. “You don’t know anybody that has a house for rent, do you?”