I sigh loudly. Even if he does hear a noise and even if he knew, inexplicably, how to fix it, what’s he going to do—carve a new part out of wood? There’s nothing but trees for miles.
“I think it’s the alternator,” he announces, climbing back in the car.
“The alternator? How would you possibly know that?”
“I didn’t always work in an office,” he says.
I’m pretty sure he did always work in an office. I picture him being born in a tiny suit and tie, immediately demanding a higher quality formula than the one offered by the hospital.
He examines the map. “We’d better get someone to take a look. I wouldn’t want you stuck in the middle of fucking nowhere, as you so charmingly referred to it.”
It all seems really unnecessary. His BMW is barely two years old—the odds that something is seriously wrong are slim.
He drives us a few miles away, to a tiny town that barely appeared on the map.
“Is the name of this place actually Hickory Hills?” I ask, as we pass a carved wooden sign on its outskirts.
He’s on his phone, looking for the service station. “I guess. Why?”
“Because it’s so…Hallmark. I mean, it even looks like a town in a Hallmark movie.” I’m practically hanging out the window to get a better look. We are on Main Street, now, which also seems to be their only street. There’s a cute little coffee shop, an ancient drugstore and a retro diner but little else.
Ben’s ignoring me, frowning at his phone. “I’m gonna drive down to the gas station and get them to take a look,” he says, stopping beside a small cafe. “You want to run in and grab us some coffee? I’ll walk back and meet you in a few.”
“Sure,” I reply, kissing him on the cheek. “It’ll all be fine.” I really hate surprises, and nothing about this experience is proving that wrong so far, but I imagine he’s a lot more stressed than I am. He’s wanted this weekend away for a while.
My heels catch in the divots in the cute brick sidewalk. I guess I should have changed before we left the office, but I had no idea he was going to be depositing me in Backwoods, USA.
I enter the coffee shop and a tiny bell over the door announces my arrival. A cat lounges in the window seat, which I assume is a health code violation. “Well,” says the woman behind the counter, “I can tell you’re not from these parts.” She nods at my outfit.
I force a smile. “No,” I reply. “Can I get—”
“Los Angeles, I’m guessing?” she asks.
“Right,” I tell her. “I guess the suit gave it away. Could I get—”
“My sister used to live in LA. Silverlake. You ever go there?”
“Um…sometimes?”
“There’s a cute little Thai place there,” she says. “If you go, tell them Amy said hi.”
For fuck’s sake. Yes, I’ll drive all the way to Silverlake for Thai food, and I’ll be sure to tell them a complete stranger said hi. “Sure. Could I just get two coffees?”
“Why don’t I make it a latte?” she asks. “You could use a little fattening up.”
Ugh. Commenting on my weight, good or bad, exceeds the limits of acceptable small-town quirkiness. “I’m fine thanks. Just the coffee. To go.”
“Take a seat and I’ll bring it over,” she tells me.
I do as she says, and it takes her several minutes to bring me two cups of coffee, which are not to-go. I’m thanking her as the door opens and three small children spill in, followed by their harried mother.
Amy swoops one of them up and gives him a kiss on the cheek. “How are my grandbabies?” she asks.
“Trouble as always,” answers the woman, who drops into a seat near mine.
One of the kids plops on the floor and starts rolling his toy car into my shoe. Once is an accident, but by the third time I realize destroying my shoe is his chosen activity for the next few minutes.
“That’s Jarrett,” Amy explains. “He loves cars.”
I love unscuffed Jimmy Choos, but I guess we don’t always get what we want. I lift my feet and Jarrett glares at me like I just entered his soccer game and stole the ball.
Meanwhile, Amy continues her running commentary about her grandchildren—their likes, their dislikes, their favorite books—and is still going strong when Ben walks in.
I jump to my feet and he waves me to sit. “You might as well get comfortable,” he says. “It looks like we’re stuck here.”
Ben’s car needs a new part, one that won’t arrive until morning. We check into a bed and breakfast, all wallpaper and chintz, with creepy dolls on every shelf, and a proprietor named Julie who stays slightly too close as she leads us through the house. She asks us to remove our shoes and warns us that the toilet isn’t great. “Call down to me if you need a plunger,” she says. “You probably will.”
The room smells like moth balls and history. “Don’t lose the key and don’t come in after ten, please,” she says.
“What would we even find to do here after ten?” I ask, and Ben steps on my foot to shut me up.
She stops at the door on her way out and looks Ben over, from head to toe. “And I should warn you that the bed squeaks and the walls are thin.”
I raise a brow at him once she’s gone. “I think she basically just told us not to have sex.”
“She’d need to try a little harder for that to succeed,” he says, wrapping his arms around me. He looks at the bed. “So what do you think?”
“I think that quilt hasn’t been washed once since someone made it in 1972 and is probably covered in bodily fluids.”
“We’ll remove the quilt,” he says. His mouth slips into a sly smile and he loosens his tie. “Look at the headboard. That’s the kind of bed we need at home.”
By which he means the kind that wrists can be tied to. I squeeze my thighs together in anticipation.
“I bet she’s standing right outside listening,” I whisper.
He crosses the room and opens the door. “I think you’re being paranoid…Oh, hi, Julie.”
She scurries away and he turns to me, his shoulders sagging. “Maybe we’ll just go for a walk, then.”
I change into shorts and sneakers, and we stroll through the town, hand in hand. Ben asks someone if there are any good hikes, which sounds like a lot of work to me, and we are directed to the woods at the edge of town, where there’s a path and a “pretty little lake”.
As we walk, I start talking about our new gender discrimination case and he stops me. “This is a no-work weekend, remember?”
“Well, if Julie wasn’t standing outside our room like a creep, I’d tell you exactly how to take my mind off work.”
He nods at the trees overhead. “Try to enjoy nature.”
“I’ve seen trees before,” I reply, kicking a branch out of our way. “Unpopular opinion, but nature is boring.”
He laughs and pulls me toward the stupid little lake, which was not worth walking a mile to view. We sit on a bench, and I rest my head on his shoulder.
“What do you think?” he asks.