Rachel Lee - The Man from Nowhere

She ignored the interested looks she received from the truckers as she eased her way between tables to Grant’s.

“Hi,” she said. In the light he proved to be goodlooking, if a bit wan. Silvery threads of gray sparkled in his dark hair. His eyes were dark, that brown so deep it would sometimes appear black. He returned her greeting with a faint smile and motioned her into the seat facing his.

“I got you a cup,” he said.

“You knew I’d come?”

“Anyone who’d come out onto a dark street to beard a stranger who frightened her must have more curiosity than a dozen cats.”

In spite of herself, she smiled back and took the chair. “It gets me into trouble sometimes.”

“I imagine so. On the other hand, you probably don’t run through life with a load of nagging questions.”

“Not often.”

He reached for the carafe and filled her beige mug. The table already held a saucer full of little half-and-half containers. She reached for one, opened it and poured the contents into her coffee. At this hour of the night, even her beloved beverage could give her heartburn. The half-and-half would help.

“I haven’t ordered yet,” he said. “Take a look at the menu. I’m buying.”

“I can buy for myself.”

“I’m sure you can. But since I caused all this uproar for you, this seems like the least I can do. And believe me, I can afford it.”

So she reached for the menu and began scanning a list that exceeded Maude’s City Diner in variety, but probably not in saturated fats. Here she could even find artificial eggs and vegetarian omelets. It gave her a glimpse of the new generation of truck drivers.

But what the heck. She settled finally on their “fluffy” pancakes.

The waitress came and took their orders, his a fullsize breakfast with all the trimmings. He certainly wasn’t worrying about his weight or his cholesterol.

With the menus tucked back into the wire holder behind the salt, pepper and ketchup, they stared at one another over coffee mugs. Trish found herself strangely reluctant to grill him, even though she’d started their conversation back on the bench by doing precisely that.

Finally he spoke. “So what can I tell you that will ease your mind?”

“What do you want to tell me?”

“That I mean you no harm. A statement that is absolutely meaningless without anything to back it up.”

She couldn’t argue with that. “Seems like one of those lines in a bad sci-fi movie that always winds up being the prelude to something terrible.”

“Hey, I like those old science fiction movies. The older and more awful, the better.”

“The ones with nuclear bombs that are both the cause and the solution to whatever is ravaging the world?”

He chuckled. “Yeah, those. Science as the be-all and end-all.”

“I take it you don’t believe that.”

He hesitated. “Not anymore,” he said finally.

She eyed him directly. “What changed your mind?”

“Let’s just say I have reason to believe that science is less of an answer and more of a question. It should be a search, not a conclusion.”

“Interesting way of putting it.”

The waitress interrupted, serving their breakfasts with a smile that seemed almost obscene at this hour of the night. Either the woman was a native night owl, or the need for tips made her pretend to be one.

After a bite of pancake, which did indeed prove to be very fluffy, she posed a question. “What brings you to Conard City? Sure, the state highway runs through, but it’s not the kind of place where people usually stop and stay without a reason.”

“I’ve been on the road for a long time. Guess I finally realized you can’t outrun yourself. Seemed as good a place as any to wait for the rest to catch up.”

The answer sounded pat. Too pat. She looked down at her mug, then picked up the spoon to stir her coffee pointlessly. “Really,” she finally responded.

“Really,” he said. “Sounds like a bad novel, right?”

She met his gaze again. “No, not exactly. Just…stock.”

He nodded slowly. “There’s a difference between citing a cliché and meaning it.”

“Well, yes.”

“And clichés become clichéd because they’re often true. Otherwise people wouldn’t use them so much.”

In spite of all her suspicions, she felt more intrigued that ever, and sensed the beginnings of an actual liking for this guy. She didn’t want that.

He shrugged finally. “It’s true. I ran from myself. From an unhappy time in my life. And like all people who run, I found all the troubles and grief just came along with me. Some memories can’t be erased. They stick like burrs on your cuffs.”

“Yes, they do. Would you want to erase your memory?”

“There’ve been times I’ve actually thought that would be a good thing. But other times…well, frankly, Ms. Devlin, you can’t give up the bad without giving up the good.” He looked out the window, but there was clearly nothing to be seen beyond the reflections of the interior of the restaurant. Darkness turned the windows into mirrors.

“I had to put my favorite dog to sleep a couple of years ago,” he said slowly. “Best dog I ever had. She taught me a lot about being a better person.”

“How so?”

He looked at her again, and there was no mistaking the heaviness in his sad, dark eyes. “I could be lazy. I could be impatient. I sometimes made her wait for the smallest of her needs. Sometimes I yelled at her for no better reason than that she was asking for a simple thing like a walk, or water. Because she was interrupting something I thought was more important at that moment. But she never held it against me. She’d go away and wait quietly, and the minute I gave her the attention she had asked for, she was hopping with joy and gratitude.”

Trish nodded. “It’s been a long time since I had a dog, but I remember it.”

“Endless love. Endless forgiveness. Endless patience. Anyway, she was a lesson, and she began to get through to me about all the truly important things in being a decent human. Simple things, every one of them, but so difficult to do. Unless you’re a dog.”

“They do seem to do it naturally.”

“I have a friend who tags her e-mails with ‘WWDD: What would dogs do?’” He smiled faintly. “A little over the top, maybe, and probably offensive to some, but to some extent my dog became my touchstone, so I understand what my friend is trying to get at. Anyway, I finally had to put the dog down. I’d waited too long because I needed to hang on, but finally I realized I was hurting her to put off my own guilt at the decision I knew I had to make.”

“It’s an awful decision to have to make.”

“It is. I guess part of me hoped I’d wake up one morning and find she’d passed peacefully in her sleep, so I wouldn’t have to make a choice at all. Life doesn’t always allow us to do that.”

“No, it doesn’t.” She paused, then took another bite of pancake, waiting for whatever else he might volunteer.

“Thing was, much as I grieved for Molly, I learned another lesson from her—it hurts, but you have to remember the good times, not the very end, which was so hard.”

Despite her determination not to respond emotionally to this guy or his story, Trish felt her throat tighten. She put down her fork.

He seemed to recognize her reaction, because he said quickly, “Sorry, I’m not trying to tug your heartstrings. It’s just…you’d think having learned that with the dog, I’d be better at handling stuff. But I’m not. When the rest happened, well, I didn’t want to be around anything that reminded me of it. So here I am, on a quest for some kind of peace. Very sixties California except it’s nothing like that. I got here and saw my journey coming to an end. So I’m going to hang around until it’s over. And then I’m going home.”