When We Were Friends by Elizabeth Arnold Page A

boarded windows and missing shingles, overgrown front lawns. A sudden wave of dizziness hit, and I made myself pull to the side of the road. I needed coffee, and maybe a protein-packed lunch to keep me going. Or what I really needed was amphetamines, but coffee and lunch would have to do. I rested my head on the steering wheel until the spinning began to settle, then started up the car again, driving through downtown.
    Downtown
was a bit of a misnomer, since the street seemed to be made up mostly of old homes with signs proclaiming them to be dentist and law offices. But on the corner was a tired café with a drooping striped awning. “How ’bout it?” I whispered to Molly, and pulled the car off the road.
    Inside, the café was thick with tarry smoke. Generating that smoke was a woman sitting behind the register with a cigarette, watching Laurence Welk on a staticky TV. Her graying hair was tied in two braids, fastened with the bright pink bobble-bands never worn by anyone over six years old; she was one of those women who look like they may be seventy, but might just be forty and having a bad day or an unfortunate life.
    She glanced at the door when I entered, then back to her show. “Take a seat wherever,” she said, speaking around her cigarette. “Menu’s on the table.”
    The thick, hot air clogged my throat; my brain suddenly felt like syrup. I set Molly’s car seat carrier on the floor, then followed it without meaning to, sat down on the floor with a thump.
    “Hell,” the woman said, her voice weary. “You on drugs?”
    “No.” I swallowed back a wave of nausea.
    She narrowed her eyes. “You sure look like you’re on drugs.”
    “No, just … tired, sorry.”
    “You planning to eat off the floor?”
    “No, I’m okay, I’m fine.” I reached for a table leg and used it to pull myself up to my feet, and immediately felt the room resume its tilt-a-whirling. I sat at the table, closed my eyes in an attempt to steady the room, and then lifted Molly’s carrier onto the seatbeside me. The woman rose and pointed at the laminated menu tucked behind the napkin dispenser. “Soup today’s clam chowder, but I wouldn’t recommend it. Same with the meatloaf special because Lord knows what Manny puts in with the meat. Cherry pie’s got fresh berries but the blueberry’s made with canned. What you want to drink?”
    “Coffee,” I said. “And a turkey sandwich if you have it.”
    “Wouldn’t recommend the turkey neither. You want a sandwich, try the chicken salad. Much better.”
    “Right,” I said. “Chicken salad’s fine.” She went into the kitchen and I folded my arms on the table, rested my head on them and closed my eyes. Beside me, Molly had started to talk, a string of random consonants and vowels all spoken in a calm, lilting tone of voice. Without lifting my head from the table, I set my hand on her belly, absorbing the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed.
    The chicken salad was remarkably good, made with walnuts and raisins and a vinaigrette rather than mayonnaise, sandwiched between slices of thick rye bread. And maybe it was the food in my belly or the bitter, grainy coffee, but by the time I was halfway done I felt rejuvenated. Not that I could drive more than another half hour before falling into a dead faint, but at least I was no longer tempted to drive off a cliff just for the chance to sleep.
    I opened a jar of vegetable medley and began feeding Molly, talking to her in low tones. Taking a kind of silly pleasure each time she opened her mouth in preparation for the spoon, the fact that she was trusting me to provide for her.
    “Are there any hotels around here?” I asked the waitress as she dropped off my folded check.
    “Hotels? This ain’t a tourist town, honey. Even the folks who live here don’t want to visit.”
    “Or within twenty miles or so? I just need somewhere for the night.”
    She tilted her head, then nodded. “There’s Muriel, up on Livingston Hill