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So what if it wasn't the main road to the lake. It was one of the roads to the lake. He was off main roads for a while anyway. Maybe for good. He signed the lease on the store and made calls to wholesalers to stock the shelves and fill the underground gasoline tanks. He had enough to cover the price of a new propane tank to draw the motor home trade and a new minnow vat to draw the fishing trade. Because it was still in acceptable condition, he briefly considered keeping the old sign: Bud's Beer Bait Gro. But his name wasn't Bud and this was no time for a man to shortchange himself. His given name was Spencer, for a movie actor his mother had adored, but he didn't like it well enough to announce it in foot-high letters. Besides, he had done some ungraceful things for which charges had been filed. As far as he knew, the law hadn't pursued the matter past the California line, but no need to wave any unnecessary flags. In a moment of bluebird optimism and promotional insight he came up with Fisherman's Beer Bait Gro. It would signal that change had come down this road, even though it wasn't the main road, and it would assure travelers that here was a business in tune with the marketplace. The Beer Bait Gro. part would represent continuity to the regulars, if there were any still watching. The store had been vacant over two years.Running a backwater Bait & Grocery wasn't what he originally had in mind when he left the Toyota dealership in Dallas and hit the main road for California. He had made Salesman of the Month a couple of times, though he mostly ignored the advice of the sales training videos and treated customers as fellow humans, which he supposed made him seem trustworthy. At least, that's the word she had used. A cab dropped her at the dealership around ten in the morning. She unfolded a magazine ad featuring the Land Cruiser sport utility vehicle in teal, fluttered the page at Spence and tossed her long chestnut hair like a girl who'd seldom failed to get what she wanted.
She grinned and sang a little two-word, two-note song. "Test drive." Spence studiously examined the ad as if it contained a profound truth. The first few seconds set the rules for the whole game. He remembered recognizing that one accuracy among all the worthless bullshit in the training videos. She could tell he was determined not to let her make sport of his big deal job so she gave up the flirtation and went for sincerity. "Hi, I'm Olivia Ord."
"Spence McAllister, come on in. I hope there's a demo available. These new Cruisers are hot right now." This much was obvious: she wasn't from Dallas. Her long fingers had no nail polish, her dark eyes had no metallic frosting, and the air around her was uncontaminated by garish perfume. He ushered her toward the side door and noticed her tuck the ad into a nicely-curved hip pocket where a leather checkbook showed above the seam. He caught himself wondering how much of his commission he'd be willing to give up to cinch the deal.
Fate made a demo available. She quickly found the shifting rhythm of the heavy vehicle and handled it well. By 10:30 they were walking the lot debating colors and options. By 11:00, she was at his desk eyeing a sales contract. He penciled in a price. Without flinching she countered with a lower figure and sweetened it with a bit of personal information: the checkbook in her jeans pocket was flush with funds from a profit-sharing plan she'd liquidated and she would soon be headed back to her home state of California. She intended to make the trip in a new Toyota Land Cruiser. Spence inked her offer on the form. "It was the black with the CD and alloy wheels, right? I'll call Make-ready. Might take an hour or so."
"Whatever." She finished writing and handed him the check.
He took the check and paperclipped it to the sales contract. "While bookkeeping okays this and the boys get the truck set up, how 'bout I buy you some lunch?"
She stretched and yawned. "Why not."
It was a long lunch. He let her drive the demo again and she went straight for the nicest Italian restaurant in Dallas. He knew the place only by reputation and bid a silent farewell to his sales commission. He glanced at the menu as if he'd tried it all, recommended the linguini al pesto, and ordered a bottle of expensive wine. For two hours, everything was funny and they had all things in common. They toasted many subjects, both grand and trivial. Then she called the waiter and paid the tab in cash before Spence could stop her.
On the way back to the dealership, she wheeled into a shady cemetery and parked. Saying nothing, she stepped out and knelt to read the inscription on a nearby grave marker. Then she came to him as he waited respectfully by the truck. He searched her face for the shadow of an old sadness, a death remembered, but he found instead a serene smile. She touched him gently on his forearm, then at the back of his neck. She drew him to her and kissed him with a kind of shy hunger.
"Somebody you knew?" he asked as he held her. He glanced to indicate the grave she had visited. Her hair smelled like night air, like that of a child who plays outdoors until dark.
"No, it was just a way to get my nerve up to kiss you. I wondered if the dead guy ever thought about dying. Ever thought about all the life he was missing, sitting in his office dying. Most people never snap out of it."
When they arrived back at the dealership her new Cruiser was parked outside the front entrance, washed and toweled to a fine gleam. He went inside for her keys, took a few things from his desk, and told the sales manager he'd ride with her for a quick shakedown spin and be right back.
The next day, Spence called the sales manager from a truck stop on I-40 somewhere west of Amarillo. His boss chewed him mercilessly for letting the company down during the busy season.
"Love. My ass. What a bunch of high-school crap. I'll give you two days off. Get laid and get back." The sales manager was not a romantic.
"I'm beginning to appreciate that I ain't dead yet. I'll call you with an address soon as I get one. I'll need my check. And do try to calm down. You might give yourself a heart attack and I promise you it's not worth it." Spence hung up the pay phone. Olivia took his hand, filled it with peanut M&Ms, and slipped one from her mouth into his.
They made Santa Fe around midnight, booked a room, built a fire in the little adobe fireplace, and bought a bottle of champagne from the bar. It was time for the histories. They sat on the floor watching the piñion wood blaze. Like him, she had once been married and like him, was shocked by its end. Like him, she had escaped into work and avoided anything resembling romance, but she admitted something had snapped when she met him. He took her in his arms and they rocked and breathed together in silence, the fire casting their joined shadow across the adobe wall.
Two days later they crossed into California with loosely defined plans to buy a house, maybe start a business, maybe get married. Spence had carefully built a defensive wall against such an occurrence and Olivia had walked through it like a ghost. She said, "I always hoped you were out there somewhere." He said, "I'm here."
The fog rolled through the Golden Gate every morning and was burnt back by the north coast sun every afternoon. They pooled their modest savings and bought a little fixer-upper cottage on a gravel back street in Marin County with a view of Mt. Tamaulpais. Spence found a plumber and an electrician willing to make a quick two hundred each by falsifying the city permits so he could do the wiring and plumbing himself. His craft was meticulous and the two paid accomplices admitted as much. He especially liked measuring, cutting, and sweat-soldering the bright copper pipes in perfect parallel lines and right angles as he had learned years before in a summer job. Olivia painted every wall, inside and out, and they ended each day with glasses of wine on a patch of brick patio they had laid together into a grassy ledge in the steep backyard. Two cheap lawn chairs faced the west. Above the cottage roof, they watched the sun sink into the redwood hills and when the air chilled, they went inside and made pasta together.
They concluded that their business partnership was to be in renovating houses. Legions of the sleek and overpaid from San Francisco crossed the bridge into Marin County every weekend to stalk real estate and soothe themselves with thoughts of green lawns and Tibetan wind chimes. It was a seller's market and loan money for renovations was readily available. Spence bought a clean used GMC for hauling materials and Olivia found a shingled bungalow for an easy first project. In the stillness of their common infection he called her Ollie and she called him Spinner.
They were agreeable and happy without exception. Nights, they made love long and slow, each held in the other's steady gaze. A year passed that was like no other time Spence had ever known or believed to be possible. And then it ended.
Late on a spring afternoon he came home with flowers. The bank had approved their loan and cut the first check for materials for their latest project, a two-story stucco that would yield some nice bucks. Olivia had driven to Berkeley to scout period bathroom fixtures to suit the 1930s style of the house and was probably delayed in traffic. He checked the answering machine. A man's voice said "Hi, it's me." Spence stood motionless as the voice continued. The words were honeyed with the same intimate familiarity as messages he had left her on the same machine. As her new lover spoke, he remembered how his grandfather slaughtered a pig by placing the muzzle of a rifle against its head and firing. Mere words will do the trick with humans. He erased the message and waited.
Olivia arrived shortly and he offered to treat her to dinner. At the restaurant he ordered the same wine he had ordered the day they met in Dallas but she missed the gesture. He drank most of the first bottle and even more of the second. Back at home, he passed out on the couch.
The next morning he insisted she go into the city for wallpaper samples. When she was gone, he shut the power off at the breaker box. In the basement, working by flashlight, he used wire cutters to remove long sections of wiring from every circuit he'd installed. He shut the water off at the meter and drilled hundreds of small holes into all the copper pipes he'd so carefully fitted. He turned the water back on and for a minute watched the spray begin to drench her stockpile of antiques. Leaving the water to do its work he loaded his few belongings into the GMC. He cashed the advance check, headed east, and was staring out the window of a motel room in Kingman, Arizona by midnight. The roomed smelled of sweat and diesel and somewhere a small dog yapped relentlessly.
Going back to the Toyota dealership, or any dealership, was out of the question. She would have filed charges of malicious destruction, and plain old theft in the matter of the $12,000 he had taken. He had to lay low. The little roadside store with its two-room trailer would do for a couple of years. To keep busy, he lettered a double-sided plywood sign to stand near the road: Propane on the top line and Minnows underneath. Life's essentials on this particular stretch of road.
Olivia loved the movie, It's a Wonderful Life. During their only Christmas together they had watched it several times. She misted up every time Clarence, the old codger angel, saved Jimmy Stewart's ass, earned his wings, and rang the bell. When she dabbed her nose with a tissue and clicked off the VCR she had seemed miraculous and incorruptible. Odd, he thought, how impossible it is to know anything for sure. He anchored the sign in the gravel and watched another car pass and recede into the distance. He hollered at the sky. "Clarence, you old bastard, where are you?"
Jim Anderson was born and grew up in Paris, Texas. He graduated from East Texas State University with a double major in art and journalism. After several years as an advertising creative director, he is now an aspiring writer. This is his first short story. (July 1995)
