The Highway Kind(25)

“Well,” the woman said, standing up, “at least you’re pretty.”

“I don’t know who you are,” Caro said.

“Oh, don’t you?” The woman’s voice was cold. “How convenient for you. I’m Lisa Mitchell is who I am. Chris’s wife. His wife.”

“Oh.” Caro took a step backward.

“I found your hair all over my husband’s car,” Lisa Mitchell said. “I found your goddamned lipstick under the seat. You know what I didn’t find?” She tossed her cigarette into a snowbank. There was an ashtray right next to her too. “I didn’t find him. I can’t seem to find him anywhere.”

Caro hadn’t lost a lipstick. She had only two, pink for Eat’n Park and red for the hotel, and they were both in her bag. “Look,” she said, “I don’t know what you think happened—”

“I don’t care what happened,” Lisa said, her voice low and bitter and vicious. “I traced that son of a bitch here, to that crappy hotel, and the manager there told me you were a lying little tease with a fake ID and that you worked here.” Caro felt a surge of anger. But before she could say anything in her own defense, Lisa took a step closer. “God, look at you. You’re a child.”

This woman was an adult. Adults didn’t tackle and spit and pull hair, but Caro’s body was wary, ready to fight. Her mind was ice-cold.

Lisa tossed her hair. Her eyes were glittery with tears. “Okay, look. I don’t care. Whatever happened, whatever you did—I don’t care.”

A group of diners was coming across the parking lot. “All right,” Caro said.

“All right?” Lisa’s face turned red and the tears spilled over and suddenly she was screaming. “Where is he? That lying...liar—that—” The words seemed to tangle in her mouth and she tore at her hair with one hand, shaking with rage. “He took all our money. He took our dog!”

The entering diners looked askance at the two women and went inside without a word.

“Karma’s going to get you,” Lisa said. “It’s going to get you, hard.” She spit on the ground at Caro’s feet. So adults did spit. From one of her clenched fists, she threw something right at Caro’s face. Caro jerked back and it missed her, but barely. It fell to the frozen sidewalk with a snap and a clatter. Lisa turned on her heel and left. Caro watched her as she stomped across the parking lot, got into a car—it looked like Chris’s—and drove away.

Caro stood for a moment, breathing in the deep cold air. When she felt calm again, she reached down and picked up the thing Lisa had thrown at her. The lipstick. The case had cracked with the force of the impact. Not Caro’s lipstick. Not Lisa’s. Somebody else’s.

It was Clinique, though. Caro slipped it into her pocket.

In the restaurant, the manager pulled her aside. “That’s it, Caro,” he said. “I’ve had enough.”

“I’m a good waitress,” Caro said.

“Yeah, but you’re a lousy coworker. I’ve been hearing complaints about you from the other girls for months, and now I’m getting them from the customers too?” He shook his head. “You’re out. Go get your stuff. I’ll mail your check.”

“Fine,” Caro said. In the pocket of her green polyester jumper, her fist closed around the lipstick. She thought about throwing it at him. She didn’t. It was a good color.

What she did was go into the back room, grab her bag, and walk out the front door and across the icy parking lot to the space under the light where her car sat and waited for her—for her, for tomorrow, for the next day. For infinite possibilities. For anything that might happen.





NIGHT RUN


by Wallace Stroby

LATER, KIRWAN WOULD think about how it started, when he might have stopped it. What he could have done differently. But by then it didn’t matter.

He’d just crossed the Georgia/Florida line on I-95, running south, the lights of Jacksonville in the far distance ahead. Two a.m. and his eyes watery, his legs jumpy. The Volvo had nearly three hundred thousand miles on it, and its suspension was shot. Every pothole or patch of uneven blacktop jolted his spine.

Still, he felt himself drifting, eyelids heavy. He’d need to sleep soon but wanted to make it as far south as he could. The meeting at Marco Landscaping, to show them the new brick samples, was at ten a.m., and New Smyrna Beach was still about a hundred miles away. He’d give it another hour on the road, then find a motel.

He thought of Lois Pettimore, Marco’s accountant. She’d be at the meeting. The same perfume as always, her blouse open one button too deep, with a glimpse of black lace beneath. Sometimes in their office he’d notice her watching him, but he never knew how to respond. He’d look away, his face flushed, then flee as soon as he had their order sheets and contracts.

At the last meeting, two weeks ago, she’d handed him an invoice, let her nails brush the back of his wrist. He’d seen then that her wedding band was gone, only a faint white line left where it had been. He wondered if the imminent divorce she always managed to bring up in conversation had gone through.

His right front tire crossed onto the shoulder, hit gravel. The noise and vibration snapped him awake. He sat up straighter and steered back into his lane, the momentary burst of adrenaline clearing his mind. That was stupid, he thought, dangerous. Stay alert.