The story she’d told Lester was mostly true, with a few crucial details taken out, the holes filled by her imagination. It wasn’t the first time that she’d reshaped a story for a man, and she knew it wouldn’t be the last.
What Nadine told Lester was that she had been a couple of days into a weeklong vacation with Jimmy, who was not yet her husband. The plan had been for the two of them to drive from Seattle to someplace near Itasca, Minnesota, to visit a cousin of his, a big family of alcoholic Catholics that she had no desire to see in the first place. But she went along with it, she told him, because that’s what couples do. Nadine was a better driver than a passenger, but Jimmy was never one for sharing, not even the steering wheel. He was happy to share his secondhand smoke, though, going through one cigarette after another, with the windows rolled up, singing along with the radio even when he didn’t know the song and couldn’t hit the notes. They’d done three road trips like this already and each one had ended with a two-week separation starting the moment they rolled back into their own driveway.
On this trip, they had barely reached Boise when Nadine decided she was finished once and for all. Jimmy had settled on a radio station some twenty miles earlier, one of those Mexican Hombre Music things, and Nadine’s head started pounding about five minutes into the mariachi.
“It’d help if you turned off that noise,” she said. “And crack a window for Christ’s sake.”
He gave her a side-eye and dialed down the window barely a notch, ignoring the radio.
Nadine rolled down her window about halfway, the racket of the wind tumbling in to muzzle at least some of the music. A Rexall sign rose up over the ridge at the next exit.
“I need a bottle of Excedrin,” she said. “Pull off here.”
Jimmy threw his head back and howled, “Seriously?” then steered hard from the highway, winding his way through a rope of roadway, finally bringing the car to a stop a good distance from the front of the drugstore.
“Make it quick!” he snapped as she opened the door. “I’d like to make it to Montana by dark.” He then rolled down his window all the way, and kicked up the trumpets another notch.
Nadine had on her favorite pair of jeans and a button-down blouse, and not much more if you didn’t count the hoop earrings and the cheap, gold-plated promise ring that she slipped into her pocket after she went out the side door with her brown leather purse weighing on her shoulder, sixty-seven dollars in her possession and a credit card that was already overextended. She told Lester that she had thought she’d just be making a point when she went out that door, that Jimmy would get tired of waiting and see that she was not in the store, and he’d circle the block a few times looking for her. But then she felt herself suddenly put out her arm and raise her thumb and within a few moments, Lester Fanning practically ran his pickup off the road to get to where she stood. He leaned out the passenger window, a mop of sandy gray and brown in need of a cut. And that radiator grill smile, a single tooth missing along the top, near one side.
“Where you headed?” he had asked. This part, he remembered.
“It’s complicated,” she said as she climbed in next to him and looked into the side mirror as they pulled away, the neon Rexall sign dropping below the ridge.
In the months since she had been with Lester, living in that ramshackle house, Nadine had rebuilt the chicken coop using lumber they’d salvaged from a collapsed barn near town, and she’d repaired the diesel generator three times, once in the middle of a downpour that hit the tin roof so hard she thought she might go crazy with the racket. She could figure things out if she had to; it wasn’t hard to do. As resourceful as Lester was, he was no use as a handyman. Maybe he’d built all this under the watch of a more skilled craftsman, or perhaps he’d just given up by the time Nadine came on the scene. Whenever she asked how he’d ever managed to survive without her, he’d just laugh and say, “I did a lot of things before you that would make that pretty head of yours spin off its shoulders, lady.”
Now he sat in a parking stall out front of A&L Auto Parts while she stood against the wood counter, a single clear light bulb in front of her. The old gal behind the register was a weathered thing, probably Nadine’s mother’s age or close to it. She’d colored her hair a crazy shade of orange that most definitely was not her own. But it was something to look at, that much was true. She picked up the bulb and turned it over in her hand, holding it by edge of the plastic casing.
“Where’d you get this?”
“Off the hook back there. It’s a taillight. For that Buick out front.”
She glanced at the window, grabbed a ringed binder and began flipping through the pages.
“I’m guessing it’s the right one,” Nadine said. “I’ll know for sure as soon as I get out there.”
Then there was the sound of Lester’s booming tone from outside. Nadine turned to see a guy bent down into the driver’s side window. He practically had his head inside the car, and yet the two of them were talking so loudly that Nadine could hear them all the way inside, though she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Cash or charge?” the woman asked. She slid the bulb across the counter to Nadine.
“Account,” Nadine said. “Under Lester Fanning.”
The woman stopped and gave Nadine a look. The smell of solvent lingered in the air, sweet and fragrant. Behind her, a ridiculous array of tubes and fan belts hung like skinned, black pelts.
“Lester, huh?”
Nadine looked back outside. The man had stood back from the window. He was a greasy sort, with hair shiny and hanging loose over his profile so Nadine could not make him out. He was practically shouting as he thumped a finger into his palm.
“He’s right there,” she said.
“You family?”
“No,” Nadine said. “But I am staying up there.”
“By choice?”
Nadine cocked her head. What kind of question was that?
“Never mind,” the woman said. “Me being nosy. That’s what I do.” She grabbed a bound book and opened it, and scratched a pen across the page. “Tell Lester he’s due to settle. Sooner’s always better than later.”
“He’s right out there,” Nadine said again. “I can have him come in.”
“By mail is just fine.” She waved a hand. “Or he can come in when Edwin’s here.”
“Are you sure?” Nadine said. She tucked the bulb into her pocket and pulled on the heavy glass door.
“I’m sure,” the woman said. Her voice was sharp enough to split firewood. She sucked in her breath and gave Nadine a smile and put out her hand. And then she closed the book and pulled a newspaper from somewhere behind the counter, snapping it open and thumbing through it, a newspaper that Nadine could see was well over a week old.