Mr. X

I gave her a short-form answer that implied that I had learned of my mother’s illness while hitchhiking for pleasure on a whim. ‘It was something I used to do when I was a kid,’ I said. ‘I should have known better. If I had a car, I could get to Edgerton tonight.’

‘Edgerton? That’s where I’m going!’ Suspicion rose into her eyes for a moment, and then she realized that I could not have known of her destination until she announced it. ‘If we’re still speaking to each other tomorrow morning, I could give you a ride.’

‘Why wouldn’t we be speaking to each other?’

‘I don’t know.’ She raised her arms and looked wildly from side to side in only half a parody of extremity. ‘Don’t guys hate the idea of waking up beside someone they don’t know? Or get disgusted with themselves, because they think the woman’s cheap? It’s a mystery to me. I haven’t had sex in a year. Thirteen months, to be exact.’

Ashleigh Ashton was a small, athletic-looking woman with short, shiny-blond hair and the face of a model for Windfoil parkas in an Eddie Bauer catalog. She had spent years proving to the men who took her for a cupcake that she was capable, smart, and tough.

‘Why is that?’ I asked.

‘The charming process of getting divorced from my husband, I suppose. I found out he was screwing half his female clients.’ An ironic light shone in her eye. ‘Guess what kind of practice he had.’

‘Divorce law.’

She pressed her palm to her forehead. ‘Ashleigh, you’re a cliché! Anyhow, I asked you those questions because I’m thinking about going back to my maiden name. Turner. Ashleigh Turner.’

‘Good idea,’ I said. Her divorce was probably no more than a week old. ‘The bad boys won’t smirk at you. But if you weren’t looking to get picked up, why did you go to the bar?’

‘I thought I was waiting for you.’ She glanced away, and the corner of her mouth curled up. ‘Sal and Jimmy asked me on a tour of their favorite Sinatra bars. The kid in the beer shirt, Ray, invited me into his room to do coke. He has a lot of coke with him, and he’s on his way to Florida. Isn’t that the wrong way around? Don’t people go to Florida to get the stuff and bring it back here? Those bikers, Ernie and Choke, wanted … Forget what they wanted, but it sure would have been adventurous.’

‘If Ray wants to make it to Florida, he better not hustle Ernie and Choke,’ I said.

She snickered, then looked chagrined. ‘I’m in this stupid mood.’

‘Did your divorce just come through?’

This time, she pressed both hands over her eyes. ‘Okay, you’re perceptive.’ She lowered her arms and turned in a complete circle. ‘I knew that, I really did.’

She sat on the edge of the bed and took off her nice lady-lawyer shoes. ‘The other reason I’m in a funny mood is that I can see my case going down the drain. Now that I’m being indiscreet, you’ve probably heard of the guy we’re after. He’s one of Edgerton’s leading citizens.’

‘Probably not,’ I said. ‘I left when I was a kid.’

‘His name is Stewart Hatch. Tons of money. His family sort of runs Edgerton, from what I hear.’

‘We didn’t move in those circles.’

‘You should be grateful, but I’ll never understand why a guy with so much going for him would decide to turn into a crook.’ She efficiently buttoned herself out of her pin-striped suit.

About a quarter to six in the morning, I jumped out of bed before I was fully awake. Nettie’s sixth sense was operating at full strength. The only thought in my head was that whatever was going to happen to my mother was rushing toward her, it was already on the way, and I had to get to Edgerton in a hurry. Still foggy, I fumbled around for my clothes and saw a naked woman on the disarranged sheets. One of her legs was drawn up, as if in midstride. Her name came back to me, and I put a hand on her shoulder. ‘Ashleigh, wake up, it’s time to go.’

She opened an eye. ‘Huh?’

‘It’s almost six. Something’s happening, and I have to get to Edgerton, fast.’

‘Oh, yeah. Edgerton.’ She opened the other eye. ‘Goo’ morning.’

‘I’m going to take the world’s fastest shower, change clothes, and check out. Should I come back here to get you?’

‘Get me?’ She smiled.

‘You’re still willing to give me a ride?’

She rolled onto her back and stretched her arms. ‘Meet me outside. I’m sorry you had bad news.’

A speedy shower and shave; a scramble into clean khakis, a blue button-down shirt, a lightweight blue blazer, loafers. I was going to see all my relatives, and for Star’s sake as well as my own, I wanted to look respectable.

Hoping she would not make me wait more than twenty minutes, I carried my duffel and knapsack through the revolving door into the cool morning light and heard a female voice call my name. Across the parking lot, Ashleigh stood beside the open trunk of a blaze-red little car. She was wearing a trim navy blue suit that showed off her legs, and she looked as if she’d had maybe twice the time most people need to look the way she did.

‘Slowpoke,’ she said.

She sailed down the nearly empty highway at a comfortable sixty-five, fiddling with the radio and letting the occasional trucker blast on by. Neither one of us knew quite what to say to each other. She found a university FM station playing a mixture of hard bop and Chicago blues and let the digital counter stay where it was. ‘Did you call the hospital before you woke me up?’

I said that I had not.

‘But you told me something happened to your mother. You didn’t get a call in my room, did you? I mean, I don’t really care, but …’

But if you didn’t tell them you were in my room, how did they find you?

‘I guess I had a premonition.’ She shot me a sidelong look. ‘Maybe it was just anxiety. I don’t know. I wish I could explain it better.’

She glanced at me again. ‘I hope she’ll be all right.’

‘I’m just glad you were there.’

‘Well, I am, too,’ she said. ‘I think you should probably go around the country giving hope to depressed women. And you were so tactful, you never made anything seem prearranged.’

‘Prearranged?’

‘Maybe not prearranged, but you know, from Chicago, with my law school friend, Mandy.’

A sign announcing the approach of a highway restaurant and gas station floated toward us. I said, ‘Why don’t we pull in there and get something to eat?’

The story emerged over breakfast. In the bar of a Chicago hotel, Mandy, the law school friend, had sent me a drink. When I left my chair to thank them, Mandy invited me to sit down. The conversation led to our various reasons for being in that hotel lobby on that particular evening, and I had mentioned that I was going to the southern part of the state late the next day and would probably spend the following night in another hotel. To Mandy’s chagrin, I had seemed more interested in Ashleigh Ashton than herself. Mandy knew that after working into the evening of the following day, Ashleigh would be driving south. She whisked her off to the bathroom and imparted worldly advice. Not long after, Ashleigh had inserted the Motel Comfort into our conversation, and I had expressed the hope of returning the favor and buying her a drink in whatever passed for a bar in the place if I wound up there, too.

‘I told Mandy you’d never show up, but she said, Go to the bar an hour or two after you check in, and he’ll find you. I wasn’t even sure it was you! In Chicago, you were wearing a suit, and here you had on jeans, but the more I looked at you, it was you. And you were so tactful, it was like you would have come anyhow, not just to meet me.’

‘I didn’t think you needed any more pressure,’ I said.

Apparently someone who looked a lot like me, a former Tulane teaching assistant named George Peters or the man for whom the woman in the old Denver airport had mistaken me, had been cruising the lobby of a Chicago hotel. No other rational explanation seemed possible. At the same time, the sheer unlikeliness of the coincidence prickled the hairs at the nape of my neck. If George Peters, or whatever his name was, had succeeded in setting up an assignation with Ashleigh, what had kept him from it?

For the rest of the drive, a caffeine-enhanced Ashleigh maintained a steady sixty-five miles per hour while describing the misdeeds of her scoundrel millionaire. I made accommodating noises and pretended to listen.

The sign at the first of the Edgerton exits read EDGERTON ELLENDALE. ‘Is this it?’ she asked.

‘The next one,’ I said.

At the next sign, EDGERTON CENTER, she spun the little car off the highway. For a time we drove past hilly fields on a divided four-lane road and then, without transition, found ourselves in the wasteland of fast-food outlets, gas stations, motels, and strip malls at the fringes of most American cities. At the moment we passed a billboard welcoming us to EDGERTON, THE CITY WITH A HEART OF GOLD, the mild, sunlit air shimmered into a wavering veil like a heat mirage, then cleared again.