ATTN: DOM#67B
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
6:00 PM FRIDAY
***STATUS CHANGE TO DOM#67A***
Fran got in that evening. She was supposed to arrive Sunday - that was what she’d told Gabe she was doing - but she wanted to get there early, to get the feel of the area.
She looked at her new home as the cab pulled into her front yard. The house was small, but clean. A single-story place with two bedrooms, one and a half baths, living room, dining room, den.
In Los Angeles it would have cost her an arm and a leg and everything in between. In Loston, she’d be able to afford it easily on her teacher’s salary. Not for the first time, she wondered if the world hadn’t gone a little crazy. Droves of people put themselves on two year waiting lists to pay five million dollars for a condo in California that they’d most likely lose to the bank anyway, while hardly anyone was moving to places like Loston. It just didn’t make sense to her.
She shook her head as the cab drove into her driveway. At least such cultural insanity could benefit her. The fact that no one wanted to live here made it easy and affordable for her to move into her new home.
She’d never seen the place - all her transactions had been negotiated online with a broker, with her cousin okaying the place as well - so she experienced the double thrill of seeing the house for the first time and knowing it was hers. All hers, with no one else in between. When Nate died, he left her with a broken heart and a sizable life insurance policy that allowed her to pay for the house.
The cabby stifled a yawn. No such thing as a gregarious cabby in Colorado, she decided. She’d fallen asleep right outside the Denver airport and hadn’t awakened until they passed a sign that said "Welcome to Loston" with an absurdly tiny population recorded below. And when she woke, there was no "Did you sleep all right?" or "Almost there," or even "This is cash, right?" to greet her return to wakefulness. Indeed, her cabby seemed quiet to the point of strangeness.
The cab stopped, and she got out, bringing her overnight bag with her. The cabby went to the trunk and opened it, revealing a medium-sized suitcase. Fran had sent on the rest of her possessions earlier in the week, and the two bags were all that remained. The cabby bent to lift her luggage.
"I can get it," she said, yanking the case out of the trunk. She set it down and looked at the house again, enjoying the lawn, the whiteness of the walls, the small picket fence that pretended to mark the boundaries of her tiny domain. She inhaled, and smelled something...something wonderful....
"No smog," she said to herself, and giggled. You always heard about it in Los Angeles; when friends went to the mountains it was inevitably the first thing they said when they returned. But to actually smell it....
A sound cut her giggle off in mid-laugh. The dry crunch of tires on gravel sounded as the cab pulled out of her driveway. It was in the street in a flash, already pulling into gear and drawing away.
"Wait," she cried out, hurrying after the rapidly proceeding vehicle, "I didn’t pay!"
The car continued driving. Fran ran after it for half a block, waving her arms back and forth, shouting at the top of her lungs (and marveling that in half a block there were only two houses!) The cab paid no heed, speeding off and rounding a corner.
Fran dropped her arms. Oh, well. She’d call the company when she got in the house. The phone should be connected.
She returned to her driveway, picked up her bags, and removed the key from her pocket. It turned smoothly in the lock, and she entered.
She didn’t call the cab company, though. Instead she moved from room to room, enjoying the feel of a place that was truly hers. She had owned her last home, too, but this was different. That had been a joint venture with Nate. This time she was on her own.
The thought made her sad for a moment, uncharacteristically so. She shook off her melancholy. "Chin up," she seemed to hear Nate say. "Keep your chin up."
So she did, raising her chin to an absurd height, stretching her neck out as she went from room to room, pretending she was a snobby Victorian heiress surveying her cottage in the country.
"It will do, Jeeves," she said to no one in particular, waving her hand in what she pretended would look like an aristocratic circle. Actually, she knew she likely looked like a nutcase with a sprained wrist, but she was having too much fun to care.
"Oh, the cab company," she said, remembering her mission. She had to call them and get the money over somehow. Credit card, most likely, as much as she hated the thought of performing such a transaction. She distrusted computers, though she knew how to use them, and the idea of someone keying in her financial numbers and billing her with no money actually changing real flesh and blood hands always bothered her.
She picked up the phone that sat in the front room, on an end table that her mother had given her when she got married to Nate.
There was no dial tone. She toggled the switch a few times, hoping to jolt the phone into responsiveness, but her effort came to naught. Gabe had promised he’d hook it up. She was early, but she thought for sure he would have done it by now. She supposed he’d forgotten.
She looked at her watch. It read four o’clock, which meant it was five p.m. here. Gabe would probably be home. She decided to walk to his house. It was only a mile or two, and she guessed there was still another good hour of sunlight. Monday she would look for a car.
She never made it to the front door.
Instead, she found herself laying in bed the next morning, feeling wonderfully well-rested. She couldn’t remember getting into bed, but chalked it up to jet lag.
She had planned on spending the first few days getting to know her new town. Instead, she spent them inside her home, mostly asleep.
And as she slept, she had the strangest dream. She dreamt that the cabdriver she’d left Denver with was not the one who took her into Loston. Because the one that had picked her up had brown hair.
And the one who took her to Loston and then left without taking her money had black hair with a gray streak down the center.
Like a skunk, she thought, and then fell asleep again.
DOM#67A
LOSTON, COLORADO
AD 1999
10:00 AM SATURDAY
John walked down the aisles of the market. He stopped at a display advertising a buy one get one free special for pork and beans. He took six cans, throwing them in a cart already filled with canned food. When Annie had been alive, he’d eaten well. Not that she cooked all the time, not at all. They shared everything as equally as possible, and John cooked for her as often or more often than she cooked for him. He sincerely liked cooking for her, and loved to bring her breakfast in bed. And since she didn’t like to eat alone, he ate with her.
But when she died, he became a bachelor in a way he’d never been the first time he bore that title: solitary, hanging out with one or two close male friends.
Eating a lot of chili.
The thought almost made him smile. Almost. But thoughts of bringing her breakfast in bed led inevitably to thoughts of feeding her in the hospital bed, spooning strained fruits and vegetables into her mouth, clearing off the dribbles, whispering to her that it was okay, and that she’d never been lovelier to him.
It wasn’t even a lie. He saw her grow more beautiful every day he knew her, even at the end. Because when her physical body started to wane, her beauty changed into something that came from inside her. It shone from a pale, shrunken frame like a candle within a Chinese lamp, seeming to glow through her translucent skin. She was perfectly lovely to him.
He came back to the present with the realization that he was blocking the aisle.
What the hell, he thought, and dumped in two more cans of pork and beans. You wanna live forever?
He walked the aisles for a few more minutes, just to be there more than to actually search for food. The store, like school and the time he spent at the bar, had become more than just a function or even a necessity. It was a proof he was alive. He lingered at those places, always half-dreading a return to his home because it was so full of Annie’s presence, yet never able to stay away for that same reason.
As he turned the corner around the large advertising display at the end of the aisle (FRITO’S 99 CENTS!), he glanced behind him, to the front of the store.
And saw them. Kaylie and the Skunk Man. They each held several bags of groceries, chock full of supplies. Already through the checkout process, they headed to the front door. John could see their blue Mustang parked in outside the huge windows that fronted the market.
"Hey!" he shouted, letting go of his cart and sprinting down the aisle. Kaylie looked back and spotted him. He saw her tug at the man’s arm. He looked at her, then up at John, bearing down on them like a smart bomb.
The man’s face paled. He pushed Kaylie out the door in front of him, and John could see them run to the car. They hurled their groceries in the back - the convertible top was down - and didn’t bother opening the doors to get in. They climbed over the side.
John was at the door himself by then, running out the market and waving frantically. "Hey, I just want to talk to you!" he yelled. There was no answer beyond that of the car’s speed increasing as it screeched out of the parking lot. A loaf of bread flew out of the car as it turned, a French roll that flew through the air like a soft mortar and landed in the gutter.
He left it on the ground, going back inside. There was only one checkout lane open, and he knew the checker. He’d taught her son some years ago.
"Hey, Mary," he said. She smiled at him, continuing to help the next customer. She waved foodstuffs across the infrared scanner, a curious juxtaposition of machinery and organics.
"John, how are you? What was the yelling all about?"
"The little girl who just left –"
"With her father?"
"I guess so, I don’t really know him." John moved aside for a moment to let her bag the groceries she had just scanned in. The woman buying the food - John had seen her around but didn’t know her name - passed an electronic check card through the debit machine screwed in next to the cash register. "But the girl’s in one of my classes at school."
"Lucky her. Chuck still talks about you all the time. Says his other teachers will suck forever in comparison. That’s a direct quote."
"Thanks, Mary. He’s a good kid. But about the little girl. Do you know her by any chance?"
"Nope. They’re new, right?"
"Yeah. Have you heard where they might have moved in?"
"Sorry, John. No idea."
John cursed quietly. Mary handed the lady in line her receipt and the woman took her groceries. It gave John an idea. "Do you remember how they paid for their food?" He hoped it was credit card. If it was, he could take the number over to Tal Johnson, the sheriff of Loston and a good friend of his. Tal was hopelessly disconnected from social life in Loston and probably wouldn’t have any idea where the new people in town were living, but he could use the credit card information to get their address, hopefully a current one in Loston.
John needed to talk to Kaylie’s father. More than he’d ever needed anything before.
"How did they pay, paper or plastic?" said Mary to herself. She opened the top of the register, reeling through the yellow carbon copies of the receipts. "Paper. They paid cash." She eyed the long string of purchases. "Looks like they were going on a trip. Just moved in and already leaving."