The restaurant was an old mill, circa 1800, right on the Yakima River, and when I opened the car door, the cool river breeze sent a chill across my chest. I was nervous about how I looked, which was uncharacteristic of me and due perhaps to my awareness that Liz Chase was a TV personality and they were always obsessed with how they look. This is completely ridiculous, I chastised myself. Go in, say hello, and eat, for God’s sake! This isn’t a date. But it feels like a date. Madge is right. I’ve got to get my personal life straightened out.
Liz waved to me from the old front porch. She was wearing khaki pants with loose net pockets, a white linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up to her elbows, sandals, and a smile. I thought she looked even better than she did on TV or at dinner the night I’d first met her. On those occasions she had looked completely female, and now with the sun angling off her tall frame, her khakis slung loose on her slender hips, and no real jewelry, she looked rakish, almost a tomboy. I liked that. The short, loose curls were in strange contrast to the strong, angular jawline, high cheekbones, and sculpted good looks. The combination was stunning. When she hugged me, I noticed that she was about two inches shorter than I.
“You smell good!” she said in a tone that assured we were merely two good friends exchanging compliments. She asked immediately if Tina had shown me the horses.
“They didn’t look as proud and dramatic as I expected,” I ventured as we entered the restaurant.
“I guess not—ripped from the tundra, corralled for weeks or months waiting for enough horses to make a planeload, shipped in crates by air to New York, quarantined, waiting for three days for the blood work to get back that determines on the spot whether they get to live or die.”
“Please, I’m going to cry!” I said.
“Can you tell I don’t like the whole process? Get one that’s here already!”
She led the way into the decaying old building and down jagged stone steps to a sitting area overlooking the river. A young woman was waiting for her with rapt attention; I assumed Liz had her cued up to make sure our every need was met, TV people being quite anal about time. She dismissed the woman with a slight gesture and a smile, saying we’d like to talk for a while and we’d let her know when we were ready for our waiter. Liz reached for my wineglass, and I held up my hand.
“You don’t drink?” she inquired.
“I do but—”
“You’re afraid some insane woman will get you drunk and demand to see more of you?” Her eyes danced. “Look, let me get this out of the way so we can relax. My comment when you gave me a lift home was a one-time-never-going-to-happen-again inappropriate proposal. You were just really smashing and I was…smashed! What can I say?” She poured me a glass of wine, ignoring the fact that I’d refused it.
“Thank you. It’s fine, really.” I felt embarrassed by the apology—actually that I should be the one apologizing. Liz had merely expressed an honest emotion, and I had acted like a 1950s nun in a brothel. I started to say something about my behavior, then feared that might take us back in the wrong direction. Liz saved me by abruptly changing the subject.
“So you saw Tina’s ranch? Did you see the black-and-white photo of Tina in competition on her Icelandic stallion doing the flying pace?”
When I told her I hadn’t, she said, “The horse’s right front and right rear legs, and left front and left rear legs, stay in sync, like a cross-country skier.”
“I missed that. I was fixated on her TRUST IN JESUS sign on the corral gate.” I rolled my eyes and Liz laughed. “Those who hang signs for strangers to observe, observe strangers for signs they should hang!”
She stared at me transfixed.
“What? Is my shirt unbuttoned?” I laughed, but thought I saw in that look an appreciation for the way I could express the very emotions she was feeling, and from that slender thread of knowing the evening unfolded.
She had graduated from Chapel Hill and worked at CNN Atlanta, ending up back in Dallas years later when she started dating a Texas boy—which I found off-putting, to say the least. She’d become a producer at KBUU and two months later was plucked from her behind-the-scenes duties to temporarily replace a woman on pregnancy leave, and never gave up the chair again. Now her life was an endless sea of groundbreakings, storm chasings, and all the gang-banger crime stories a girl could ask for.
“And everybody knows your name, as they say in the Cheers bar.” I toasted her with my wineglass. “Do you like your job?”
She began a rehearsed response, touting all the celebrity and excitement, then broke off midsentence as if suddenly injected with truth serum and simply said, “No.”
I arched my eyebrow in a playful question mark.
She locked eyes with me, her voice lowering in pitch, and said, “For the same reason you don’t like being division president of a big corporation—we’re enacting men’s fantasies, pursuing men’s goals, and making men rich while wasting our potential and our lives.”
I sipped my wine, unable to stop gazing at her, taking the measure of this outspoken woman and how far this shared moment would go. Is it our work experience, our femaleness, or our very souls that have connected? On that last thought, I sat up straighter in my chair, changing the energy, and Liz clearly felt it.
“Let’s find you an Icelandic horse to ride, since you managed to miss the shoot. You wouldn’t buy a car unless you at least test-drove it,” she said, doing a one-eighty from the intimate moment before.
As she quickly shifted psychological gears, I was caught off balance. “I’m not buying a horse,” I finally managed to say. “I have no place to put one.”
“Well, not tonight.” She laughed as the waiter came to our table offering bread.
“I shouldn’t eat any. I’ll never lose weight.” I sighed, trying to distract myself from thoughts of Liz.
“You look fabulous,” she said, and I felt heat rise from my collarbone to my ears.
“Are you sisters?” the waiter asked.
“No,” I said kindly.
“You sure do look like sisters,” the waiter continued, his expression puzzled.
“Actually, we’re closer than sisters.” Liz jumped into the conversation. “We share the same likes and dislikes, and, by being together this evening, we have saved two other people from the certain misery of our opinionated, high-energy, New-Age-meets-middle-age lifestyle.”
“I’ll give you some time,” he said and left.
“Too much sharing,” Liz critiqued herself. “I’m sorry. Did that make you uncomfortable? But ‘are you two sisters?’ Really! I hope he never takes a job in California’s Russian River. He’ll have ‘sisters’ coming out his ass. This is such a great evening and it feels so…familiar. Do you ever have those moments of déjà vu?”
“I had a really bizarre dream. Does that count?” I smiled, wondering again why I was here—on this planet, in this state, at this table, with this woman.
“Tell me.”
She must ask herself that question all the time. She’s doing the news. Is that what she came into this world to do—report traffic conditions? She knows that’s not it.
“I don’t know…” I hesitated, not wanting to make a fool of myself. “My dreams seem to center around why we’re all here. I mean, what difference does any of it make? You, me, any of us? I can’t seem to get philosophical clarity on what we’re all doing…besides getting drunk.” I took another sip.
She leaned in, propping her elbows on the table and cupping her wineglass in both hands, and stared over the top of it at me as if I were the most profound human being she’d ever met. I wondered if she practiced that kind of visual intensity merely to get good interviews, but her stare captivated me nonetheless.
“Are we here to make the earth a better place for the next generation? Because that makes about as much sense as a beauty contestant saying her mission is world peace. Are we supposed to ignore any human return on investment in this lifetime and hold out for celestial ROI? Because frankly, I just don’t know if I can hold out,” I said, and finished off the wine.
“You’re very passionate…”
My chest tightened. Now the heat around my collar was sweeping up my throat and flushing my face.
“…about life and about horses.” Liz finished the sentence. “I have a feeling you’re about to own a horse.”
“’Fraid not,” I protested.
“Now if I follow your philosophy, you should stop holding out. You should give in—let go,” she said, her voice sensual. “If you wait until life is perfect before you act, then you never take action or your actions are too late. Do what feels right, then life falls into place. At the end of the day, when you’re lying on your deathbed, do you say I’m so happy I never took that risk on the horses, or do you say I’m so glad I did that?”
I laughed at her commentary and she gave me that penetrating look again—the one that was just this side of sexual. “How about taking a trip, just you and me, to a few Icelandic horse farms?” Her eyes glistened. “Let’s take a long weekend and drive around.”
My mouth went dry and my mind, repository of standard thought, seriously considered her offer while my intellect, seeker of higher standards, gave me a sound puritanical slap.
“Clare wouldn’t really appreciate that,” I stammered, inserting my lover between us like body armor.
“Probably not,” she finally said.
Those were the very words she used that night in the park. Why am I intentionally creating distance between us again? I’m supposed to create distance—I live with someone. I’m not out to pick her up!
After an awkward moment Liz took a deep breath as if she’d been underwater for a long time and had nearly died. When she said she needed to get back to her hotel and get some sleep, her tone changed. She explained she was subbing for someone on air tomorrow night and had to catch an early flight so I signaled the waiter for the check, but she had already taken care of it, having given him her credit card before I arrived. She was definitely a woman who planned and who took charge. I appreciated the forethought that took.
“Drink this entire cup of coffee before you leave, promise me?” she said, touching my arm, and I nodded in acquiescence, wondering just how drunk I appeared to her. “Thank you for coming to dinner…it was great fun,” she said as she stood up.
“It was,” I echoed. She extended her hand in the formal way businesswomen say good night, and despite the brevity, I felt her tenderness and strength. She didn’t linger in touching me but pulled away and grabbed her bag, slinging it over her shoulder.
“Well, take care. And have a safe trip back,” she said in that tone that sounded very much like this was a wrap—whatever might have been between us, now not possible. I nodded and wished her the same. Liz walked briskly out the door, and I noticed once again that her derriere was perfectly engineered. Perfectly. God, my head is stuck on that! I thought, irritated with myself.
I was suddenly too warm and too agitated to stay inside. Taking my coffee with me, I wandered down the narrow lamplit path just outside the restaurant to the river where large flat rocks had undoubtedly provided resting places for countless diners over the decades. Across the river in a large pasture, black-and-white cows, visible in the moonlight, were chewing placidly and sauntering through the high grass—the embodiment of nowhere to go and all night to get there.
After slipping off my socks, I plunged my feet into the icy stream, which immediately numbed any sensation all the way up to my knees. Relaxed, I let out a great sigh, my feet feeling no pain for the first time in weeks. I stretched my arms out behind me, placing my palms on the warm rock surface, and leaned back, gazing up at the stars. How was it possible to feel restless and calm all at the same time? This feels so good; I could stay here for the rest of my life. I wish Liz had stayed and she was sitting here with her feet in the water beside me, continuing our conversation.
It had been a long time since I’d had an interesting conversation with Clare, one in which we focused intently on one another and not the stove as we cooked, or the sheet music as she played, or my computer as I worked. Perhaps only strangers focus on one another intensely. I felt loneliness, or guilt, or something nameless stir in me, and I speed-dialed Clare. It took five rings for her to answer, and she sounded groggy. I told her I was sitting on the banks of the Yakima River and knew how much she loved the out-of-doors and just wanted to say she would enjoy it here and maybe we should take some time to be together. She hesitated, which I took as silent inquiry as to the timing of my call.
“Did I awaken you?” I asked.
“It’s okay. I just have an early morning.”
I apologized and hung up, wondering if one should have to apologize to one’s lover for calling her on a starlit night while away from home to say she was missed and to share vicarious moonlight. A light breeze picked up, moving the leaves so the moonlight flickered overhead. It was sheer heaven, and I decided not to let anyone take this moment away from me.
I was surprised to see a man and woman standing on the embankment just to my left; I hadn’t heard them approach.
“Wonderful, isn’t it?” The woman smiled at me.
She looked like she was forty-three. Maybe. She was wearing khaki pants and a white shirt, dressed much as Liz had been, a loose jacket thrown over her shoulders, not the look of a tourist wanting to put her feet in the water.
“I’m very familiar with this stream. My family lived on that farm across the river for centuries. In fact, the town of Samuelsville was named after my great-great-grandfather. So you’re just passing through, is that it?”
“Leaving in the morning. I just stopped to have dinner with a friend and to put my feet in the river. It looked so cold and beautiful. In fact”—removing my feet from the water, I sighed and pulled on my socks—“I have to get going.”
“Why do you have to go?” She seemed genuinely sorrowful about my leaving.
“A business meeting tomorrow, back home.”
She frowned slightly. “Why would you let a business meeting take you away from all this?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” I smiled wistfully.
“Well, now that you’re finally here—a remembrance of your trip to these healing waters.” She bent over slightly and handed me a postcard, and the tiny lights lining the pathway reflected off her beautiful blue eyes, as if drawn to their particular brilliance. I imagined her eyes were the color of this very stream in the daytime. I glanced down at the postcard in my hand: it showed the Yakima River photographed at just about the point where we were standing. The caption at the bottom read, Home of Edward Samuels until 1892, when he moved to San Francisco to start a ferryboat operation.
“Well, thank you,” I said, looking up from the card, but she and the man had disappeared. That was odd. The way they seemed to just fade into the bucolic scenery. Almost ghostly! A shiver danced across my shoulders, and I jumped up from the rock, slapping at the seat of my pants in a parentally engrained Pavlovian response to perceived dust and dirt.
Now I was even more restless than before I’d sat down by the river. Something had happened to me. What, I wasn’t sure. But I knew I needed to cancel my hotel reservation. I had suddenly decided to take the red-eye home that night. Why unpack, toss and turn, repack, and take a plane home at dawn? I’ll sleep on the plane, then sleep in until noon and go into the office late.
For the first time in years I felt completely confused and restless. Always, I’d known where I was headed, what I wanted to accomplish, conquer, own—and now I was adrift. Nothing had the same significance for me. I didn’t want anything I had, and I wanted things I didn’t have. I have a great job and good health and a wonderful life! I told myself brightly. I need to pull myself together. What I really need to do is talk to Clare. We’re not in sync, that’s the problem. We’re just not in sync. We don’t share enough experiences together. We’ve got to fix that.
*
It took me two and a half hours to drive to SeaTac, the Seattle/Tacoma airport, and I caught late flight 111 outbound. The weather was perfect; it was dark outside and the cabin was quiet, people either sleeping, reading, or drinking. I didn’t awaken until the seat-belt sign dinged and we were told to put our tray tables in the upright position and prepare for landing. When the wheels touched down, I was congratulating myself on this smart move. Feeling rested and alert and having saved myself half a day, I had many things I could get done before dark.
The sun was up when I pulled my car out of the airport parking garage. I’d asked Jane, my assistant, to cancel the limo service for this trip because the drivers could never refrain from quizzing me: Where was I headed? Was I from here? What kind of work did I do? Jane had spoken to the owner of the limo service who said he’d have a talk with the drivers, but somehow they couldn’t stop themselves. Jane said it was my kind face; I thought it was their poor training. A limo service should have drivers, a call center should have talkers. Although driving my own car meant I had to fight traffic, I could do it in silence.
After paying the gate attendant I merged onto the freeway toward my house, Clare’s house, actually, but after four years and some minor redecorating I had come to think of it as my house as well. Ten minutes later, turning down the oak-lined street of two-story colonial homes, I pulled into the driveway, dodging a red convertible someone had left jutting out in the street two feet too far.
I put my key in the lock, punched the entry code into the keypad, and headed for our bedroom. My heart hammered my chest as I spotted a woman, naked to the waist and wearing flannel jockey shorts with a black-and-white cow pattern on them, charging toward me in the hallway. I stood stock-still.
“Who the hell are you? Clare!” I shouted, wondering if she was all right.
“Shit!” the woman said, and ducked back into the bedroom.
Moments later Clare appeared in the hallway clutching her robe, trying to wrap it around her half-naked body. My mind locked up. I couldn’t think. It made no sense. Clare was the one who didn’t want to discuss a breakup. Now she’s screwing around?
The chest-of-drawers-shaped woman bolted out of the bedroom again, this time wadding her clothes up in a ball and tucking them under her arm like a running back. She mumbled something over her shoulder to Clare.
How long has this been going on? Have Clare and this woman exposed me to some STD? Those thoughts fueled my actions and I flung myself into her path, infuriated and unwilling to let her off that easy.
“Look, you two don’t have anything going, so don’t blame me!” the woman huffed in my face. I could hear Clare screaming my name over and over, as if to reason with me or distract me or stop me from what I was about to do.
“Don’t blame you for fucking my lover while I’m away? Don’t blame you for exposing me to some sexually transmitted Mad Cow Disease? Or don’t blame you for running naked down my hallway begging me not to shoot you?” And with that I reached into my briefcase for a gun—well, she thought it was a gun. It was actually my car keys.
“Brice, please don’t!” Clare screamed.
The woman flung herself back against the wall, gasped, gathered energy, and charged me, apparently thinking she was about to be killed.
“I’m out of here!” she yelled and dashed past me, but not before I swung my briefcase like a bowling ball into her kneecap. She drew up short, howling, Clare alongside her now bawling, the two of them in harmony like coyotes on a moonlit night.
“You stay, I’m going,” I said flatly. “It will save me having to burn the sheets.”
I could hear Clare whimpering my name and pattering after me on the wood floors as I left the house, slammed the door behind me, and backed the car out of the driveway and, in demolition-derby fashion, smacked it into the cherry red convertible whose owner I now knew. I was happy about the crunching metal and the hours cowgirl would spend in the body shop with a mechanic whose biggest smile would most likely emerge from the back of his pants.