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“Oh yeah? In college, I suppose?”
“Actually, no. But it was right after college.”
“And what did you think of the Lone Star State?”
“It was a long time ago,” Wendy said, quickly adding, “Stan, what do you do for work?”
“Well, I’m lucky enough to be an early retiree. I worked for twenty-five years as a police officer in Flower Mound, just outside of Dallas. Have you heard of it?”
“I haven’t. What brought you here?”
He hesitated, enough for Wendy to know that he was deciding what to say. “Well, I’ve always loved to fish, and I was all set to head to Corpus Christi like I usually do, and then I thought to myself, now that I’m a man of leisure, why not travel around America and see what fishing is like in different parts of the country? So I’m on an epic road trip. And New Essex was pretty much first on my list.”
His Texas accent, through the course of this story, had noticeably strengthened.
“You should talk to Rick. He should be in here later tonight, and he’ll happily bore you with fishing stories.”
“Oh, you know, I think I talked with Rick a few nights ago.”
“Yeah, that was Rick,” Thom was saying, and Wendy realized that Stan had been hanging around the Tavern for a while.
The door swung open and two older couples came in, probably having just finished their dinner at the upstairs restaurant. Stan slid down the bar and back to his seat. Wendy and Thom clinked glasses.
“It’s so nice you came,” Thom said.
“Jason convinced me. God knows what he’s up to right now.”
Thom lowered his voice and said, “What was up with you and Stan?”
“What do you mean?”
“You were acting pretty chilly toward him.”
“Well, I suppose so. You ever meet someone and instantly dislike them?” After saying this, Wendy realized that Thom had probably never experienced something like that. It was a fundamental difference between them.
“He seems okay,” Thom said.
Wendy requested a glass of ice from Howard, poured her martini on top of it, and then asked him to add tonic. She had decided to stick around that night, at least until Thom was ready to go. The door swung open again, and several more people entered, a couple of tourists (the past few years the tourist season had been expanding all the way through November), and then Fred Hayes, one of their neighbors. Wendy asked him to join them.
While chatting with Fred, she watched Stan, who was very slowly nursing what looked like a light beer, a drink he’d been lucky to get from Howard. Now that she was able to study him, she realized he was older than he looked. It was just that he was still fit and had a full head of dark hair. But his hands were ropy and his face was sun-damaged, his cheeks rosy with those tiny broken vessels that hard drinkers sometimes get. Yet he was deliberately not drinking much tonight. And watching him now, she had a strong feeling that he was here—here on Goose Neck, here at the Tavern—because of them. It was a feeling she’d had before, that they were being watched by someone, and even though that feeling in the past hadn’t amounted to anything, she was convinced that Stan was an exception.
Fred, like Thom, was a big fan of classic Hollywood, and the two of them were trying to impress each other by naming particularly obscure films that they loved. Wendy asked Howard how the summer season was, and he smiled. “My faith in humanity is diminished, but my wallet is fatter.”
“Sounds like an even trade.”
“I’d say so. Can I get you something else?”
“Just a plain old soda water, please. With a lemon.”
After he’d brought her the drink, Wendy asked him what he knew about the new guy, tilting her head toward Stan’s seat, unoccupied for now, although there was a coaster on his beer to indicate he’d be back.
“Been here every night for a week. He’s your husband’s new best friend.”
“Looks that way,” Wendy said.
When she and Thom left, the temperature had dropped, and she wished she’d brought at least a light jacket. Walking back along the narrow lane, Wendy scanned the license plates of the nearby parked cars. She spotted what was definitely a rental car, a white Ford Fusion with one of those barcode stickers in the window. “Why are you studying cars?” Thom said.
“I didn’t know I was.”