*
When Claire stepped outside, the autumn light was slanted and orange, like the noontime sun had fallen to the ground somewhere far away in the flat distance. The light at this time of year had a different feel to it, like a beacon slowly fading.
She was about to turn right, toward the café and Fred’s market, but to her left she caught the glint of something silver, and she turned to see two ladies standing outside of Maxine’s clothing store, speaking to an elderly man in a gray suit.
It was him. The old man she’d seen outside her house, twice. She hurried up the sidewalk toward them, bypassing a group of college students who had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to take a group selfie, as if the act of walking on the sidewalk itself needed to be documented. Claire hedged around them, losing sight of the old man for a moment.
When she looked again, he was gone.
Puzzled, Claire approached the ladies. She knew them well. Claire used to cater all of Patrice’s anniversary and birthday parties. Patrice was with her sister, Tara, who often visited from Raleigh. Claire had gone to school with Patrice. Sydney put a lot of emphasis on her own high school years, how pivotal they were to her. And Sydney wanted so much for these years to be good for Bay. But Claire could honestly say she didn’t remember much of her own high school experience. She went, kept to herself and waited to go home in the afternoons so she could join her grandmother in the kitchen. It was, like most things in Claire’s experience, something she glossed over in favor of better memories. Sydney called it her revisionist history.
“Claire, we were just talking about you,” Patrice said. She was in her early forties and fighting it. Her hair was long, super-blond and shiny. Facial fillers kept her mouth from moving too wide, so she spoke with a slight fish-face expression. Her blue eyes were deeply rimmed in black eyeliner, a look she wasn’t young enough to pull off, and her pupils were always a little dilated from taking one too many anti-anxieties, though she thought no one noticed.
“That man, who was he?” Claire asked, trying not to sound like it was urgent, because it wasn’t really urgent. At least, she didn’t think so.
“What man?” Patrice said.
“There was an elderly man standing here a moment ago,” Claire said. “He had silver hair. He was wearing a silver suit.”
“There was no one here,” Tara said. Tara was older than Patrice and not fighting it as well, in large part because Tara didn’t have the kind of money Patrice married into. Her hair was darker, and she wore tunics covering a perfectly acceptable middle-aged belly, hiding it from her go-to-the-gym-every-day sister.
“He was right here,” Claire said, getting frustrated. “Right where I’m standing.”
“I’m sorry, Claire,” Patrice said. “We haven’t seen anyone like that.”
“You were talking to him,” Claire said, frowning.
“We were talking, but just to each other,” Tara said. “What was it we were saying?”
“I don’t remember,” Patrice said.
Tara laughed. “That’s funny, I don’t remember, either.”
“We came out of the store, and you walked up to us. I thought we’d been talking about you, but I suppose we hadn’t.” Patrice shrugged.
Claire said good-bye and walked away, leaving Patrice and Tara staring off into space, as if someone had put them in a trance.
Someone who smelled like smoke.