He rolled into town one evening a little too early for anything to be happening, not that anything ever did. Nothing much, anyway. Something close to nothing, close to never. In light of these things he didn't know, he went to the diner on the square and sat on a stool at the otherwise empty counter and ordered "just coffee, thanks," wondering immediately if he ought to move on, maybe find somewhere else in town, maybe move on to some other town. In the end inertia won the debate and he sat there and drank refills of coffee and made hardly any impression on the evening at the diner as it materialized around him. Even when in full bloom, the evening still wasn't much, but it was something. Four or five people scattered along the stools at the counter. Eight or nine tables and booths populated with families and couples and assorted packs of strangers and loners, unfamiliar but not at all mysterious.
"Anyone sitting here?" he asked the skinny girl in skinny jeans and the green "Oktoberfest '02" T-shirt, indicating the stool beside her.
"No," she said, smiling hesitantly. She said it two long syllables, like girls from Texas towns do sometimes. Not shrill, though. Soft. He liked the sound of it.
"Are you waiting for someone?"
She said, "No," again and smiled less hesitantly, turning slightly toward him. Sitting down he told her he was Ian, which she pronounced back to him as "Een," one syllable. She was Jennifer, but everyone called her Jen, two syllables. A few innocent humorous remarks broke the ice. A couple of leading questions opened up the conversation. Soon she was asking him adorable questions in her soft, Texas voice and he was immediately and breathlessly infatuated with her. For her he was someone different, a thing that made him mildly interesting and fleetingly entertaining and ultimately irrelevant to her life. There was a safety in that: It didn't really matter what happened with him. She sensed the urgency flushing in him and she leaned slightly closer, laughing easily at his jokes, blinking sleepily, leaning a little closer still.
The sun set behind the courthouse and the streetlights blinked on one by one. Headlights came up on the old pickups passing by the window. Motorcycles started roaring up to the little bar diagonally across the square, each one ridden by a scraggly, small town hippie in jeans and boots and a black leather vest with some slogan or club name on the back. Some had biker chicks or country girls "riding bitch," as they were wont to say.
People came and went slowly from the diner. A few walked over to the biker club and some wandered from there to the diner for a bite to eat or just for a change of scenery. Smokers sat outside the on benches on the sidewalk. Jen's leg was touching Ian's knee, her foot brushing his calf every few seconds. When she laughed she would press her arm and shoulder against his arm and lean forward so close that he could smell her hair. Sometimes she would pat him jokingly on the knee or push him away playfully, her hand briefly flat against the center of his chest. He wondered if she knew how this made him feel. He suspected she did. He was mostly right about that.
A police cruiser, the window down, idled up slowly on a couple of the bikers across the square. They greeted him. Small town familiarity. Everyone knows everyone. The cop joked and chatted with them for a while until an old Malibu tore through the square, running two red lights and bottoming out with scrapes and sparks at the dip in second intersection. The cruiser lit up with a howl and took off in pursuit. All the heads on the square turned for a minute toward the spectacle then, one by one, turned slowly back, some of them muttering the name of the town delinquent at the wheel.
Jen said there was a motel on the edge of town, but she didn't know anything about it. She said it with a kind of dismissive tone that said it was his business, not hers. She didn't say, "We've got a room you can stay in. My parents won't mind because they're out of town." She didn't say, "I'll ride over with you and show you where the motel is, maybe even help you get settled in." She was not that kind of girl. He didn't really want her to be that kind of girl, not really. He didn't really like that kind of girl. It would have been nice, though, to have her. Unwinding the conversation toward farewell, he ached lustfully - almost moaned - knowing that her pleasant company was all he would know of her tonight, probably ever.
When the diner closed and Jen said goodbye she kissed him on the cheek, a quick and warm gesture, and she was gone. He watched her walk out and then, prompted by some of the lights being switched off, he left himself. Things were still cranking over at the biker bar. He thought about heading over, but decided against it with a yawn. One last look up and down the street to see if he could spot her getting into one of the cars, but she was gone.
The motel was cheap, in every sense of the word. The room was warm and moist. Ian lay naked on top of the covers and flipped fitfully through every basic-cable channel over and over. When he closed his eyelids he saw Jen's smile, her skinny cuteness, her green eyes. He moaned and sighed. At some point he fell asleep.
The diner was a busy crush of farmers and blue-collar workers in the morning. This was, like most small towns, a morning place. Of course Jen wasn't there. He rolled out of town after breakfast, passing last night's Malibu parked beside the police cruiser at the court house. He pictured the delinquent inside, sleeping it off.
[The End]
Hello, friends. I hope you're well.
Later. Love.
