by Dave Lowry
Luck was on my side. The buns were right there. Sitting and waiting for me behind the glass of a snack machine. A bubbling water fountain that sprang up from the desert in the middle of Death Valley wouldn’t have been more welcomed for a guy crawling across the sand. Push a dollar bill into the slot, press C4, and—with a whir and a click and a satisfying thump—dinner was served. Wrapped in their shiny cellophane sleeve, the buns looked glossy and ripe with life-giving sweetness. In another machine were plastic bottles of orange juice. Could it get any better? I doubted it. Between the buns and the juice, I would pretty well satisfy my growing body’s need for simple and complex sugars for the next week or so. Moments later I was doing just that, slowly savoring one bun and licking a piece of icing off my upper lip while I stood and read a poster mounted behind a plastic frame about the history of that part of the Granite State. I learned that Littleton, New Hampshire, was originally called Chiswick, which is a Saxon word meaning “cheese farm.” I wondered why the Saxons needed a word for that. I learned that if you were living back around the beginning of the twentieth century and you wanted a stereoscope—and who wouldn’t have?—you could get one made at a factory right here in Littleton. I learned that there was a restored gristmill nearby. And a candy store right in town that was reputed to have the longest candy counter in the world. I wondered who kept records for that kind of thing. I finished the second bun, tossed the last of the juice down.
I heard a buzz behind me. I turned around and looked at her. She was wearing jeans faded at the knees, sneakers, and that bulky pea coat, unbuttoned, with a bulky knit sweater, brown, underneath. Her black hair was hanging straight down from a gray stocking cap, and she was bent over the map, studying it, so her eyes were hidden by her bangs. Still not looking up, she fished into the pocket of her coat and came up with a phone. She glanced at it, then put it to her ear and spoke.
“Wèi,” she said. And then, again in Mandarin, “Yes, yes, I’m okay. I’m in New Hampshire.” She repeated, “New Hampshire. Yes, I know.” Silence, while the other person was obviously talking, then, “Three friends who were going skiing here,” she said. “Yes, I got a ride from them.” Silence. “Because it was the fastest way out of town.”
Well, I thought, momentarily distracted from contemplating the deliciousness of my recently finished meal, this is interesting.
“I don’t know,” she said. “They dropped me off, and I’m somewhere in New Hampshire right now—I can’t find it on the map.” She looked down again at the map spread out on her knees. “But, yeah, I’ll get there. I just don’t know when yet.” She looked up, out the glass doors of the rest stop, into the nightfall. “Or how.” Another pause, then she nodded into the phone and said, “Yes, I will be. See you soon.” She ended the call and stuffed the phone back into her pocket.
I thought about it. Not long. Not long enough, anyway, to make any kind of wise, well-contemplated decision. About 1/100 of the time I’d devoted the night before trying to remember that third line of the TV theme song. About 1/10,000 of the time I’d thought about the Saxon need for a word for “cheese farm.” Which probably says more about me than I’d like to admit. And if the men’s room had been in the other direction, I might have turned that way and just kept going. She was sitting, though, between me and the place where, now that I’d slugged down all that juice, I needed to be. I was going to have to walk right by her. And it was just the two of us, in that official New Hampshire Department of Transportation Rest Area, in the middle of Nowhere, New Hampshire (somewhere close to Cheese Farm). In late January. Almost dark. Dark enough that the trucks and cars passing by outside were all wearing their headlights now, cutting beams through the shadowy dusk that was seeping in and sucking out all the light that was left of the day. I walked up to her.
“So,” I said in Mandarin, “come here often?”
She didn’t look up. She kept studying the map. I couldn’t really think of a clever line to follow up what I thought was, all things considered, a fairly amusing and effective opener.
Then she spoke, still not looking at me. “You speak Mandarin as beautifully as a monkey playing the cello,” I thought she said back. I got most of it. I caught the word “erhu,” a kind of two-stringed cello-like Chinese instrument. I knew that because a month or so earlier I’d read a review of a Chinese movie, and the movie’s composer used a lot of erhu music. I was pleased with myself at having that little bit of wisdom tucked away.
“Monkey played well enough for you to understand the piece, though, didn’t he?” I smiled.
“Yeah,” she said in English, still not looking up. “But I took a whole semester of Understanding Bad Mandarin.” Her English wasn’t accented. She’d learned it in her pumpkin seat. But Mandarin had been in there too. She’d learned both the words “cello” and “erhu” right about the same time in her life probably. If she had some kind of regional accent in Mandarin, I didn’t think I’d be able to pick it out. I couldn’t pick out her regional English either, except it sounded just a touch broad and flat and Canadian. If I could get her to say “about,” I’d have a clue.
“Not to be rude,” I said, “or intrusive. But do you need some help?”
“Yeah,” she said again. She looked up from the map on her knees and lifted her eyebrows. Her eyes were blacker than her hair. “I’m a fragile China doll, and I’m sitting here hoping a big, sensitive, but manly American guy will come along and take care of me in my moment of distress.”
“Good luck with that,” I said. I pulled my hand from my coat pocket and glanced at my watch. With my other hand, I felt my keys. The Toyota was calling to me. Miles to go before I slept. “Next manly American guy’s scheduled to be coming through here in about thirty minutes. Might be a little late, what with the winter weather and all.”
I figured she needed some time to think about that. So I went into the restroom. When I came out, she’d folded the map and put it on top of the bag at her feet. She was gazing out into the evening, watching the traffic. There wasn’t much. I thought about the situation again. This time not so long.
“Look,” I said, “I was kidding about the next scheduled sensitive but manly American. And I assume you think I’m a Wally Reed and all.”
She wrinkled her forehead. She did make eye contact, though.
I kept going. “And if I were you and looking for a ride, I’d think a long time about accepting one from anyone, least of all from some guy alone out in the middle of nowhere. If I were you, I’d be thinking this is scene three from a slasher movie, and everyone in the audience is watching you and begging you not to be stupid enough to get in the car with what looks like a ‘troubled loner.’”
She smiled, just a little bit, at the “troubled loner” part. I kept going. “But if you don’t have some other plan for this evening, it’s going to end one of two ways: either you are going to have an actual troubled loner come in here, and you’re going to be in some kind of danger, possibly serious danger, unless you’re concealing a Glock under that coat and know how to use it. Or two, the highway patrol is going to come by, and you are going to be picked up for—excuse me, nothing personal intended—‘solicitation’ or for not having any visible means of support or some such thing, because they understand that nothing good’s going to come from having a girl sitting out here all alone.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, as if she was thinking it over. “Could you repeat that in Mandarin?” she asked finally.
“I’ll give you the highlights,” I said. But I didn’t. I just called her a “big egg.” It’s a slang expression in Mandarin. It means a “stupid person.” And I told her it was dangerous, very dangerous, to be sitting there. She sat there anyway, staring out at the highway, where the traffic was cutting sharper beams of light through the twilight that had completely closed in. In January in New Hampshire, night doesn’t fall slowly. It drops in like a piano falling out of a tree.
She sighed. “What are the odds a slasher slash troubled lo
ner would be able to speak Mandarin?” Then, before I could say anything, she added, “Bad Mandarin.”
“Long,” I said. “Long odds. Though not impossible.”
“I’m going south.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s a divided highway. If you were going north, you’d be in the rest stop on the other side of the road.”
“What’re the odds a slasher slash troubled loner would also be logical in drawing deductive conclusions?” she asked.
“Okay,” I said, “I am a troubled loner. But that means if you get in the car with me, your principal threat will be boredom from my dramatic angst and morose self-pitying and not from exsanguination.”
She reached over and took the strap of her duffle and stood up. “Fine,” she said. “But I’m accepting a ride from you not because I believe a word you’re saying but because I just think it’s unlikely I’m going to be in danger from anyone who uses a word like ‘exsanguination.’”
She followed me out to the lot behind us, tossed her duffle into the rear of the car, and sat in the passenger seat, clicking on her seat belt.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
I backed out of the spot and threaded through the parking lot to the exit back out onto I-93. “St. Louis, Missouri,” I said, “by way of Massachusetts. How about you?”
“Buffalo, New York. By way of any way I can get there.”
I was curious about why anyone would be going to Buffalo in January. Or to Buffalo, come to think of it, in any month of the year. I didn’t really want to go into why I was going to St. Louis, though. No reason not to go into it. It wasn’t a secret. It just seemed a little complicated and, if I thought about it too much, a little too “undefined.” So I didn’t pursue the topic. Before I’d even gotten the car up to highway speed, she tilted her head back onto the seat rest and closed her eyes. I drove south.
4
Rule #3: Incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babes are almost never psycho ax murderers.
“Wally Reed?” she asked.
I glanced over at her. She’d been sleeping, her breathing slow and deep and steady, for over an hour. It was night now. Full-on dark. Snow had started falling not long after we’d left the rest stop, snow that had begun to alternate with a sleety, freezing rain that peppered the top of the car with a soft patter. We were stopped, along with the five sets of taillights I could see in front of us. Beyond them flashed rotating wheels of red that I assumed had a state police car under them. The dashboard lights lit up the side of her face as she turned to me. The rest of it was in shadow. She hadn’t taken off her knit stocking cap. “You said I thought you might be a Wally Reed.”
“Yeah, Walter Reed,” I said. “You ever hear of him?”
She paused and thought for a minute. “The doctor? The one who went to Cuba or someplace back during the Spanish-American War; discovered the cause of—” She stopped. “Ohhh. I get it.”
It was quiet some more. “That’s a good one,” she said finally. “Yellow fever.”
“Sure,” I said. “What do you call them?”
“Gee-Gees.”
“Gee-Gees?”
“Acronym,” she said. “Stands for ‘Geisha Guys.’ Guys who have a thing for Asian girls. Guys who have, as you put it, ‘Yellow Fever.’”
“A trifle creepy.”
“We still haven’t established that you aren’t one of them,” she said.
“I haven’t asked you to give me a massage.”
“Or to pour you some sake.”
“Are you hungry?” I asked.
“Nope,” she said. “You?”
I shook my head.
“Yeah, given that banquet I saw you indulge in back at the rest stop, I can see why not,” she said.
“A sound diet is the cornerstone to a healthy life.”
She rubbed her face briskly, with both hands. “Why are we stopped?” she asked.
“Moose would be my guess,” I said.
“Moose?”
“Moose. Somebody probably hit one crossing the road.”
“Does traffic stop for the funeral?”
“Ever see a moose?” I asked.
“Not that I know of.”
“You’d know it,” I said. “They’re big. Hit one with a car and you’ll take him out, pretty messily, and do about the same to your car. The combined mess of moose and machine tends to shut down the road until they can get a tow truck out to haul off the car and the moose.”
“Where are we?” she asked, covering an impressive yawn.
“Getting close to New Hampton,” I said. “You were asleep all through the middle of the White Mountains.”
“Were they scenic?” she asked.
“Spectacular,” I said, “though arguably not so much when it’s pitch-black.”
From behind our car, from our right, I saw more flashing, moving slowly off on the side of the road, that came close and turned out to be another highway patrol car. It slowed, then stopped beside us, and I leaned over when my new friend rolled down her window. The patrolman had lowered his as well.
“Moose?” I asked.
“Moose.” Then he added, “Road’s starting to ice up too. Going far?”
“Mass,” I said.
“Why?” he asked.
I grinned. There was not a lot of love lost between Massachusetts and New Hampshire. People in the latter tended to regard people in the former as thoughtless littering jerks who used New Hampshire as their backyard playground. On the other hand, people in Massachusetts, too many of them, were famous for thinking of New Hampshire as, well, their backyard playground.
“Hauling a load of the trash they left back down to dump on their lawns,” I said.
He grinned back. “Good,” he said. “But you might want to take a break. Salt trucks are coming this way. Be easier driving after they’re through.” He waved. The line of traffic in front of us had started moving. There was enough snow and ice on the road that I could hear it crunching beneath the tires. We passed the moose—its mortal remains anyway—that was on the side of the road next to a pickup truck. Given the shape of the front panel of the truck, the moose had done some customizing work on it.
“Wow,” she said. “They are big.” She yawned.
When she yawned again, I asked, “Tired?”
“Yep,” she said. “I was mostly pretending to sleep, waiting to see if you were going to try to molest me.”
“Same here. Only I was just pretending to be driving. Next rest stop, do you mind if we pull off and sleep for a while?”
“Oh, now it gets weird.”
“Only if you can contain your natural impulses to throw yourself on the first sensitive but manly American guy who picks you up at a rest stop in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “Besides, you heard the highway patrol guy. If we wait until the salt trucks come through, the road’ll be in better shape.”
I slowed and eased off the highway and came up the ramp that led to the rest stop parking lot. There were separate spaces for trucks and cars, and I wanted to park as far away as possible from the row of throbbing diesels idling in the truck lot. But I didn’t want it to look like I was driving us off into the shadows too deeply, away from all the other cars and trucks. That could have seemed a bit weird. So I nosed the Toyota up against the curb close to the restrooms and the covered pavilion that held the snack and soda machines.
“You go first,” I said, pushing my chin toward the restrooms. “I’ll stay with the car.”
She opened the door. “There are some snack machines over there,” she said. “Want me to get you another course in your banquet?”
“Pass.”
When she returned, I took my turn. I washed my hands and face in the sink and brushed my teeth. Time to tuck myself in for beddy-bye. At an interstate rest stop. Alongside what was basically a hitchhiker I had picked up randomly. At another rest stop. I didn’t think this was taking me in exactly the sort of life direction my counselor back at Beddingfield wo
uld have approved of.
We pulled the levers to make both front seats recline back as far as they could, which is, in a Toyota, nowhere near comfortable or conducive to sleep. I offered her the sleeping bag. She took it, unzipped it, and tossed it over herself. I had on a pair of silk underwear I used to ski in, heavy corduroy pants, a cotton shirt, and a knit sweater. I threw my parka over me. It was full of some fluffy material guaranteed to keep me warm on most of the mountain slopes of the Himalayas and to wick away moisture like a sponge. It didn’t, however, have much going for it in the way of bedclothes. As long as I was warm, though, I’d be able to sleep. I burrowed my way into the seat and rolled onto my side. The trucks hadn’t gotten any quieter.
“How do you know I’m not a psycho ax murderer who’s going to castrate you in your sleep?” she asked me, after we’d both rustled around a bit and found what seemed like the most comfortable places to be and had been still for a while. I could tell from the sound of her voice that she’d pulled the bag up around her head.
“Be a clear violation of the rules,” I said.
“Rules?”
“I have some rules,” I said. “They’re pretty dependable.”
“Which rule covers this?” she asked. She’d sat up.
“Number three,” I said, rolling over. “Rule Number Three is that incredibly beautiful, exotic Asian babes are almost never psycho ax murderers.”
“Oh,” she said. She lay back down. It was quiet, except for the rumbling engines of the trucks in the lot beside us and another going by on the highway right then that changed gears with a throaty growl.
“I’m curious about what Rules Number One and Two might be,” she said.
“Stick around,” I said. I rolled back again and faced the door handle and closed my eyes. I’d figured, with the combination of the truck noise, the sodium lights in the parking lot casting sickly yellow shadows, and the oddness of having a complete stranger lying next to me, that it would take time to go to sleep. I was wrong.
