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“Really?” I say, also turning into myself again.
Jeff flashes that widescreen smile. “It’s been a rough week. You deserve something nice.”
Inside the shop, I’m relieved to learn the dress’s price tag is slightly less than my Grace Kelly estimate. Discovering that it fits brings more relief. I buy it on the spot.
“A dress like that deserves an occasion to match,” Jeff tells me. “I think I know just the place.”
We dress for dinner, me in my new frock and Jeff in his sharpest suit. Thanks to the hotel concierge, we’re able to get a late reservation at the city’s hippest, most crazy-expensive restaurant. At Jeff’s encouragement, we splurge on the nine-course tasting menu, washing it down with a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon. Dessert is a chocolate soufflé so divine that I beg the pastry chef for the recipe.
Back at the hotel, buzzed on wine and our foreign surroundings, we’re flirtatious and sensual. I kiss him slowly while unknotting his tie, the stubbled silk winding around my fingers. Jeff takes his time with my dress. I shiver as he inches the zipper lower, my back arching.
His breath grows heavier when the dress drops to the floor. He grips my arms, hurting them just a little. There’s lust in his eyes. A wildness I haven’t seen for ages. It makes him look like a stranger, dangerous and unknowable. I’m reminded of all those rough-and-tumble frat boys and football players I had slept with after Pine Cottage. The ones not afraid to yank off my panties and flip me over the bed. The ones who didn’t care who I was or what I wanted.
My body trembles. This is promising. This is what I need.
But then it’s gone, the mood falling away with the same ease as Jeff’s tie slipping from my hands. I’m not even aware of its passing until we’re on the bed and Jeff is inside me, suddenly his usual maddeningly conscientious self. Asking me how I feel. Asking me what I want.
I want him to stop caring about my needs.
I want him to shut up and take whathewants.
None of that happens. The sex ends the way it normally does—with Jeff spent and me stretched on my back, a tight lump of dissatisfaction in my gut.
Jeff showers afterward, returning to bed pink and tender.
“What’s on your agenda for tomorrow?” he asks, voice distant, already sailing on the boat to dreamland.
“The usual sights. The Art Institute. The Bean. Maybe some more shopping.”
“Nice,” Jeff sleepily murmurs. “You’ll have fun.”
“That’s why I came along,” I say, when, in fact, it’s not.
Fun has nothing to do with my reason for coming here. Jeff has nothing to do with it either. While he was in the shower, washing off the sweat and smell of humdrum sex, I was on my phone, reserving a rental car.
In the morning, I’m going to drive to Indiana and finally get some answers.
28.
Roughly 230 miles lie between Chicago and Muncie, and I drive them as fast as my rented Camry will allow. My goal is to get to Lisa’s house and see if I can learn something—anything—before returning to the city by evening. The trip is long, about seven hours total, but if I keep a quick pace, I can be back before Jeff knows I’m gone.
On the way there, I make good time, stopping just once at a convenience store off I-65. It’s one of those sad, generic places that wants you to think it’s part of a chain. But the seams show. All those sticky soda cans, scuffed floor tiles, and racks of nudie mags wrapped in condoms of clear plastic. I buy a bottle of water, a granola bar, and a pack of cheese crackers. The breakfast of champions.
A rack of silvery lighters sits on the counter. When the stoner clerk cracks open a fresh roll of pennies for the register, I grab one and stuff it into my pocket. He catches me, smiles, sends me off with a wink.
Then I’m back in the car, marking my time by the way the sunlight slants across the flat ribbon of asphalt. The scenery streaking past the window is rural and stark. The houses have stripped siding and leaning porches. Miles of fields fly by, their cornstalks reduced to stubs. Exit signs point to small towns with misleadingly exotic names. Paris. Brazil. Peru.
By the time the sun has become an unblinking yellow eye directly overhead, I’m steering through Muncie, searching for the address Lisa gave me in case I ever wanted to write.
I find her house on a quiet side street full of ranch homes andsycamore trees. Lisa’s is noticeably nicer than the others, with fresh paint on the shutters and pristine patio furniture on the front porch. A circular flower bed sits in the middle of the well-trimmed lawn, a fiberglass birdbath rising from its center like a giant mushroom.
A station wagon with a PBA sticker slapped to its back bumper sits in the driveway. Definitely not Lisa’s car.
After parking on the street, I check myself in the rearview mirror, making sure I look somber and curious, not deranged and stalkerish. At the hotel, I had taken great care in picking an outfit that walked the fine line between casual and mourning. Dark jeans, deep-purple blouse, black flats.
I head to the front door using the flagstone walkway that cuts through the yard. When I ring the doorbell, I hear it echo back at me from deep inside the house.
The woman who answers the door is dressed in a monochrome outfit of tan slacks and beige polo shirt. Tall and angular, she might have resembled Katharine Hepburn in her younger years. Now, though, webs of wrinkles surround her hazel eyes. She brings to mind an Okie in a Walker Evans photo—thin, hard, and bone-tired.