Russell shook his head. “I don’t have a heart anymore, Anne.”
“And I don’t have expectations anymore. What?” she asked with a laugh. “You thought I wanted a love affair? You’re old enough to be my father.”
He clutched at his heart dramatically. “I’m wounded.”
She scoffed as she sat back down. “Hardly.”
He considered her for a moment. “If not a love affair, then what?”
“I want stories,” she said. “And I don’t care if they’re lies. I’m tired of picking around in other people’s lives, making things up on my own. I want to hear everything you have to say. I’ve lived here all my life, and all the stories are the same. Every one of my husbands, the same story. But you’ve been everywhere, haven’t you? I want to follow you where you go, and see what you do. I think you’ve been on your own for a while, haven’t you? At some point, you’re not going to make it on your own. I could be there for you. I’m a decent cook. I could take early retirement and get a little money in the mail every month. And there’s over six thousand in the inn safe that my brother won’t miss until he discovers I’m gone.”
He hesitated for just a moment. Then he shook his head dismissively. It was ridiculous, but she was offended, offended that she wasn’t deviant enough for him. “Too messy,” he said. “He’d call the police.”
“In case you haven’t noticed by now, I’m nosy,” Anne pointed out. “That’s how I know my brother has flash drives full of video chats he’s recorded, showing him having virtual sex with some woman in Finland who calls herself Karma-licious. He spends hundreds of dollars a month on her. I could take one of the flash drives and then leave one in the safe so he’ll know I know. He won’t call the police.”
That tempted him. She could tell. Food. Money. Those were his weaknesses. He took a deep breath and exhaled with a long, drawn-out sigh. He stared into the smoldering ash of his failed attempt at cash. “Oh, Anne, it’s not as glamorous as you think it is. You have a good life here. I’m going to a charity camp for retired circus workers.”
“Do I look like someone who wants glamour? I think that sounds fantastic.” She reached into her jeans pocket and brought out the flyer she’d taken from him. She unfolded it and showed him. “What do you say, Great Banditi?”
He studied the flyer, looking at the old photo as if through a telescope pointed back in time. “You can keep that, if you’d like. But on the condition that you remember me fondly. There are so few people who do.”
“I find that hard to believe. Who could forget you?”
He smiled derisively. “Oh, many people remember me. But not fondly.”
Anne pushed the flyer into his hands. “I’m not keeping it. I’m going with you. Meet me in front of the inn at five o’clock, after tea. All the new guests will be checked in by then. My brother won’t know I’m gone until the morning.”
She felt her nerves tingling and her stomach jumped with excitement as she walked away, even though Russell called sadly after her, “It’s been a pleasure, Anne.”
*
“Checkout is at eleven, Mr. Zahler,” Andrew Ainsley said, sitting at the front desk like a large, lazy sentinel.
“Thank you. I am aware. I’ll be down shortly,” Russell said as he walked up the staircase after making sure the ashes of his Lorelei Waverley file were cool. He reached his room and closed the door behind him. He’d left the curtains open and warm autumnal sunshine was covering the bed, making it glow. He wanted to lie down, to absorb the softness of the mattress one last time.
But he didn’t. Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed and waited for sounds of other guests leaving for checkout. He would sneak out behind them and avoid Andrew Ainsley at the front desk.
He took the photo out of his pocket, wondering why he had saved it at the last minute. He certainly didn’t like being reminded of his failures.
He was usually good at reading people, and he’d been almost certain Claire Waverley wouldn’t tell anyone about his visit to her, that she wouldn’t immediately call her family for support. Everything he’d learned about her had pointed to a singular, contained person who liked her mysterious air. She wasn’t the kind of person who would risk others thinking there was nothing special about her.
He’d obviously pegged her wrong.
And then there was the moment she’d leaned in and said, Take a bite. I dare you. He’d had such a clear image of Lorelei that it had startled him and he’d felt a cold chill go down his spine.
He hadn’t expected that, either.
But in everything else, in every other detail, he had been meticulous. It should have gone so smoothly. He’d spent countless hours in libraries over the past few decades, when he couldn’t find a place to stay in towns he’d drifted to. He would charm librarians into helping him search for information. Because of his time with the carnival, there were thin lines connecting him to so many people that, if the lines were visible, Russell’s life would look like a string map. He stored away secrets and collected photographs, always on the lookout to add to the folders he’d amassed on people he’d once known. Stories formed this way. Angles.
He looked at the photo of himself, Lorelei, Ingler, Barbie and the child. It all made perfect sense, the story he told. Barbie and Ingler and their solemn little girl. Lorelei and her wild streak, stealing the baby away. Russell an innocent bystander, watching the drama unfurl forty years ago. Naming the child Donna had been a nice touch.
But that was all it was. A story.
The truth was, Russell had met the beautiful, tragic Lorelei at that bar in the photo the very night the photo had been taken. She’d waltzed in with her child, a daughter, Claire. No one told her to leave, to take the baby out of the bar. Lorelei could charm anyone. Russell had bought her a beer and invited her to sit with him and his new friends Ingler and his wife, Barbie. They were drifters, newly hired at the carnival as ticket takers. Barbie had wanted to hold the toddler Lorelei had on her hip, so Lorelei handed her over, and at that moment the bartender had taken a photo with the new camera he’d been showing off.
Later that evening, Russell had taken Lorelei back to his travel trailer. She’d smiled as she’d shown him the camera she’d stolen from the bartender. For the three weeks the carnival was in town, Lorelei had stayed with him, her quiet little girl sleeping in a corner. Russell often forgot she was there. He and Lorelei had fun. She was sly, with a sleight of hand that impressed even him. She was also beautiful and charming and could make everyone love her. She was just the kind of restless soul, the misfit, the society runaway that carnivals attracted. She could have stayed and fit right in. But Russell knew she wouldn’t. At the time, she had been too young to realize you can’t outrun your demons.
On the day the carnival broke camp and hit the road again, Lorelei disappeared with her silent daughter in tow. She stole a few hundred dollars from Russell, but left the camera for him.
In some ways, she had been no different from the many women he’d picked up to share time with in every town. But in other ways, she’d been wholly unique.
He remembered once, one night when they’d gotten drunk in his trailer, she’d told him the story of her strange North Carolina family and their apple tree and the vision she’d had when she’d eaten an apple. He remembered her reaching over and grabbing an apple he’d had on a small plastic table. She’d touched it, and a thread of white frost had snaked over the apple, eventually covering the entire thing. She’d then tossed the cold apple at him with a laugh. “Take a bite. I dare you.”
And he remembered thinking, Everything I make up is nothing compared to her reality.
They’d woken up the next morning, hungover, and she’d never said another word about the incident. Sometimes he wondered if he’d dreamed the whole thing.
He heard some voices in the hallway, the shuffling of luggage. The couple in the room next to his were walking downstairs to check out.
Russell tucked away the photo, then picked up his suitcase and looked around the room, making sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.
He thought of Anne Ainsley, and he really did hope she would think of him fondly. That was unusually important to him right now. For once in his life, maybe he would leave something good behind, a few conversations and stories she’d remember with a smile, the Autumn the Great Banditi Came to Visit.
He took out the folded carnival flyer she’d given back to him and he set it on the bed.
Then the Great Banditi did what he did best.
He vanished.