A Man Of Influence

She laughed and came to a stop at the intersection of the large, deserted town square. It had a broad expanse of grass and a huge oak tree with a single, wrought-iron bench beneath it. Tracy glanced at him with those clear blue eyes that seemed to see so much. “Agnes is single. Rose is single. Mildred is single. Eunice, too.” She smiled at her listing of old ladies. “Need I go on?”

“Please don’t.” He fought off the thought that he’d slipped back into his parents’ world. No nightlife. No metropolitan eclectic energy. A pace slower than frozen molasses. All these old people. They’d get sick. They’d drift mentally. They’d die. They’d leave behind friends and family with holes in their chests that nothing seemed to fill.

Suddenly, Chad didn’t want to be here. He gripped the seatbelt strap across his chest.

Oblivious to his need to flee, Tracy turned right and continued to drive his car as if it was her own—a bit fast, banking into the turns. It was oddly relaxing—the ride, her youth, the way her hair dipped and tumbled in the breeze. His grip on the strap eased.

“Where’d you learn to drive a stick?” Few people had the skill anymore. His dad had taught him to drive a manual transmission on his 1967 Ford Mustang.

“First, a farm tractor. Then Mildred’s Volkswagen Beetle.” Tracy made another right and slowed down through a residential district.

Single-story ranches and Craftsman-style homes. Dirty windows and peeling paint. Empty driveways and neglected yards. Many seemed abandoned.

The neighborhood was an afterthought relative to the puzzling woman next to him. “Have you always struggled to get the words out?”

Tracy slammed on the brakes, sending the tires squealing, even though they hadn’t been going faster than twenty miles an hour. She gripped the steering wheel and turned to glare at him. “I had an accident.” And then she lifted her gossamer blond hair, revealing a ropey scar on her skull. “I have...expressive aphasia. I’m trying to be normal.”

Chad was beginning to think Tracy wasn’t normal. She was extraordinary.

An aluminum screen door screeched on protesting hinges. An elderly woman stepped out on her front porch in a pink chenille bathrobe and white tennis shoes. Her short gray hair stuck into the air as if she’d rubbed her head against a balloon. “Everything okay, Tracy?”

“Yes, Mrs. Beam.” Tracy glared at Chad, but her voice was sweet as sugar, and didn’t sound forced.

“I could call the sheriff for you,” the old woman said.

“We’re fine, Mrs. Beam.”

“Okay, dearie.” Mrs. Beam went back inside. Her screen door groaned as if it belonged in a haunted house, and then banged shut.

Tracy put Chad’s car in gear and continued slowly down the street.

It was time for a change of subject. “So your brother owns the winery. Do they make good wine?”

“Is your car fast?”

That was a good sign. “Do wine lovers come from miles around to taste their wine?”

“No. They only...soft launched.” She turned to the left and parked in front of a forest green Victorian with white trim and an expansive lawn.

Chad was used to seeing narrow painted ladies in San Francisco’s Cow Hollow district, but this house was easily three times the width of one of those classics. “Impressive.” Why hadn’t the Lambridge Bed & Breakfast turned up on his internet search? It had a great location. It couldn’t have been more than a ten minute walk from downtown. He hoped it was as nice inside as it was out.

Chad made to open his door.

Tracy put her hand on his arm, stopping him. Her touch was soft, personal when Chad had lived an impersonal life for years. “Don’t hurt them.”

“Who?”

“The people here.” She gestured back the way they’d come and then she fixed him with a warning stare. “You’re the Happy Bachelor. Well... Your columns aren’t happy. They’re...they’re...mean.” She made a frustrated noise, slapped her palms against the steering wheel as if unhappy with her words, and then added, “Malicious.”

Chad fell back against the seat. The September sunlight fought its way through the brown and curling elm leaves, but didn’t warm him.

She’d seen his columns. People usually responded in one of two ways to his travel reviews in the Lampoon—love ’em or hate ’em. Put Tracy in the hate column.

Chad’s instinct was to laugh Tracy off, or to tell her to mind her own business, but something about her scar, the way she spoke and perhaps even the way she defended the elderly made him take a different approach. “I don’t attack anyone personally. I write things the way I see them using the irony of truth.”

“They won’t understand.” There was an entreaty in her voice, if not in her eyes, which still promised retribution if he hurt the people in town.

Chad didn’t care if the locals understood or not. Having been raised by parents the age of his peers’ grandparents, he was tired of making concessions for the elderly. This was his time. He’d live life and write columns his way and enjoy doing it. And yet, he didn’t snap at Tracy. “You don’t sugarcoat anything, do you?”

“I can’t.” She opened her door with jerky movements. “Not anymore.” She popped the trunk for him, peering inside at his laptop bag, his travel bag and the box from the office, flaps folded and sealed.

Taking his suitcase and his laptop bag, Chad followed Tracy up the grand walk. Huge trees, lush shrubbery and not a weed in sight. The windows gleamed and reflected the late morning sun.

The front door was open, but the proprietor seemed as closed off as the pilot’s lounge at an airport. Salt and pepper beehive hair. A blue dress that hung awkwardly off her bony frame. And an air about her that said, “Thou shalt not hug. Ever.”

Chad couldn’t blame the others at the bakery for not wanting to come here. The place and the proprietor were intimidating. Why on earth was this woman running a bed & breakfast?

The proprietress opened the door wider to let him in. The hinges didn’t creak, didn’t groan, didn’t even whisper. It just seemed as if they should have. “Welcome to Harmony Valley. I’m Leona Lambridge.”

Queen of all she surveyed.

She surveyed Chad and, with a turn of her nose, found him wanting. “And welcome to the Lambridge Bed & Breakfast. I’ll show you to your room.” She held a stop-sign hand toward Tracy. “You may wait outside.”

Chad wondered if Tracy’s request to go easy on folks in town extended to Queen Leona.

He doubted it.

“I’ll walk back.” Tracy handed Chad his car keys and then shoved her hands in her tan jacket pockets and headed to the street. The town’s young protector may look waifish on the outside, but Chad suspected she had a core of steel. That scar...

“Mr. Healy.” A royal summons.

Chad turned, and crossed the threshold. The bed & breakfast had been decorated in period style. Antiques. Gilded mirrors. Ceiling medallions. It was spectacular. It smelled cleaner than a hospital room.

“I’m trying a new check-in procedure.” For a moment, the ice queen’s demeanor cracked. “I must find you tolerable and you must agree to pay me with cash or check at the end of your stay.” She gave him a nightly rate he deemed acceptable.

“I’ve got cash.”

“You’ll do.” Her expression turned icily regal once more. She led him to the grand staircase, her back as rigid as a British royal guard.

The floors creaked, but everything was clean. The stairs groaned, but the wood was so shiny Chad could almost see himself in the reflection. When they reached the second-floor landing, the house rattled as softly as a whisper and settled with a sigh, as if it’d been empty too long. It was the most welcome Chad had felt since arriving.

Leona made a noise that seemed disapproving and opened the first door. “This is your bathroom.”

The horror. Chad had to share a bathroom with other guests. The normal traveler would view this as a mark against the place. Chad looked forward to the stories sharing a bathroom with fellow guests would bring. Of course, the stories would have been better if the bathroom wasn’t first-rate. White on white, from the claw-foot tub to the pedestal sink to the penny floor tile and grout. Not a crack or a chip or a stain anywhere.

Leona walked farther down the hall, opening the second door. “And this is your room.”

Chad set his suitcase in the corner. He could tango in that room, even with a king-size four-poster bed and a simple cherry desk and matching chair. The southern-facing window let in generous amounts of sunlight. “This is nice.”