Dark Winds/Yellow Birds

By Jo Mitchell

...Air rank with evil-smelling smoke, pushed by dark winds, howling through his mind....

Smuggled out of Nazi Germany as an infant, Paul Romanof is now a pensive journalism professor held captive by his parents tragic legacy. He must contend with emotional obstacles: nightmares, strange compulsions, and the persistent memory of a youthful romance. He is about to become entangled in an incredible series of events which will enlighten the past, and illuminate the future.

Lilly Reuben: A gutsy reporter with her own mislaid story, starts out on a bitter February night to meet Paul at his home for dinnerthe result of a personal ad. Caught in a surprise blizzard, she hikes to a convenience store when her car breaks down. Here she runs into Dan Miller, a seductive trial lawyer with a singular and depraved agenda. Lilly is vulnerable prey to his fascination.

Miller and Romanof live and work in the same area, unknown to one another. Yet they are bound by their history, Millers twisted ideology, and by desire for Lilly.

Lonny DuBois is a private investigator hired by Miller to conduct an extensive surveillance on Lilly. But DuBois, who has taken the job as a favor to a cop friend, soon realizes there is more reason to suspect his employer. What he learns will change everything.

Paul Romanof, Lilly Reuben and Dan Miller plunge blindly toward devastating revelations from which there is no return.

With one prophetic exception.

Tiny claws fixed to cruel perch, they sang.... their voice; a symphony of life....

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 17, 2001
• ISBN: 9781462830565

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

CERTIFIABLE. UNREMITTINGLY, ONE hundred percent

nuts. This could be a free, one-way ride to someplace nasty. That has occurred to you?

You don’t want to be thinking that way. Any more analysis and you’ll be zooming off the next exit. The proverbial bat out of hell. And which is the hell of choice—the one you know or the one you don’t?

Lilly knew if she talked herself out of this, she would be having a conversation with herself late at night in her empty apartment: Couldn’t go through with it, could you? Figures. You’ll take all kinds of risks for the job, all guts and grab. But as a woman? Ha! Just plain chicken. Gutless.

Lilly sighed. A puff of recycled air escaped her lips. It hung there, a fragile mist, and was gone. As if her very essence had quit its host in disgust.

The little Honda sped headlong into Saturday night. She’d come this far. Did she really want another weekend with too much time on her hands and nowhere to spend it? Time that could be interrupted by a call from one of the editors?

‘Got a hostage situation on the West Side—wacky boyfriend with a freaking arsenal—get your rear end up there right now.’ Or, ‘Medivac chopper down on 195, two fatalities and counting. You’re closest, get going. Photogs on the way. Your turn in the trenches, Lil.’

All part of the territory she’d coveted and worked her tail off to get. They had her. Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, the editors called the shots. And she wouldn’t trade the job with anyone.

All that raging adrenalin. Addictive stuff. It ate her up and left her gut growling for more. And more. After a while she forgot what solitude was. Somewhere, maybe in another life, seclusion was a reward. In this life it got old soon enough. Too much time alone invited introspection.

And a tiny bit of self-knowledge was a dangerous thing. It had led to this lovely little adventure.

It suggests what happens when you get involved with men you don’t know. Those women who go out with men they meet through personal ads must be out of their minds.

I don’t care. Screw this wishy-washy stuff. What’s the big freaking deal, anyway? Must be thousands of people, right now, on their way to meet someone they found in the personals, Lilly informed herself and was not convinced.

She found herself in startled eye contact with the driver of an Infiniti sports job as it sailed past in the outside left lane. It disappeared from view, an illusion. Reality was the needle on her dashboard speedometer marching into the red zone. Resisting the impulse to jam the brakes, Lilly eased her foot off the accelerator until she was back safe at fifty-five.

Secure now from zealous state troopers needing to fill quotas. The law would do without her tonight. She would be a good girl and stay out of trouble… . Hopefully.

Go ahead. Choose one, and go for it. They can’t all be sleazeballs… The guys who wrote these ads make sleaze sound like something to strive for… Anyway, you are joking. Right?

Freezing rain pummeled the windshield with relentless indifference. Lilly had to strain to see out. What was visible was no comfort. Interstate 95 seemed to stretch out forever; maddeningly tedious scraps of slick tarmac barely illumined by her headlights. Alien-looking vapor lamps planted too far apart on the barren median strip cast a disturbing and ineffective greenish glow. Sporadic signs of civilization, pale pinkish neon haze at the horizon, incandescent dots of warmth from houses tucked snugly away over the nearest ridge. Beacons of cozy sanctuary, taunting.

Above the arc of her headlights, metallic green and white signs suspended over the highway swayed alarmingly, heavy with ice crystals. Sleet was turning to snow, now adhering to the highway.

She slowed to thirty-five, resigned to taking the first exit that came up. The weather, not cowardice. Find shelter. Find a phone and call Paul. Get him to meet her, so she could follow him back to his place for that exotic dinner he’d promised.

It had begun as a joke.

She replayed that last phone conversation with Paul and heard the voice that had captivated her imagination. Paul spoke words and Lilly smelled white lilac gently dripping spring rain, while her head resounded with Bach fugues. She sensed symphonies, celebration and melancholy.

What was left unspoken was more enticing than the usual let’s-get-to-know-each-other small talk. The man she hadn’t met was an enigma.

Raucous blaring of a horn jarred Lilly back. If she didn’t quit daydreaming, the revelation of Paul’s mystery would be moot.

Was that her exit coming up? She squinted out into the thickening storm, quickly glanced at the note pad on her knees. Peered through the windshield between slaps of the wipers that were no longer keeping ahead of the ice patterns forming beneath them. Visibility was next to nil.

Lilly checked her rearview mirror—no other idiots out there—and eased onto the exit ramp. Fishtailing as her tires lost traction. Panicked, she fought down the urge to stomp the brakes. Held her breath as the small sedan spun around in a wide circle, finally slowing to a standstill, aimed sideways across both traffic lanes of the ramp. Lilly, hands still clamped fast to the steering wheel, waited for her pounding pulse to ease.

Okay, still in one piece. Not so much as a dented fender. Better get to a store, a pay phone and put an end to this nonsense, call it a night.

Nervously, Lilly shifted into first and cautiously pressed the gas pedal, sighing in relief when the Honda was once more pointed ahead. The small car skidded twice more, but held the road as she came to the end of the off-ramp and attempted to read the signs pointing right and left.

Consulting her notes again, Lilly saw she was meant to take a left, then look for the turn-off after three and a half miles. Edging up just past the stop sign, she craned her neck toward the right and thought she saw the faintest glimmer of light off in the distance. The road marker bore the symbols for gas stations and lodging in that direction. Civilization.

No debate this time. Lilly steered to the right, wanting only to get off the road and find any kind of refuge. Her every concentration was focused on that goal. It was all she could do not to yell out loud as out of the quickening blizzard a pair of halogen beams bore down on her from behind. There was no time to react, merely a second to wonder fleetingly why she had to die this way. A low-slung, large sedan neatly swerved at the last second before imminent impact—and swung smoothly around and past without slowing down. It vanished almost instantly into the swirling wrath of shrieking, wind-driven snow. The Honda’s engine stalled out.

Son of a bitch.

Her hands clammy and white-knuckled on the wheel, Lilly wished she could just sit there until the sun came out and melted the world back to normal. An unbidden vision of her frozen corpse being discovered by the authorities in the cruel light of day spurred her on. Not so much how she would look—and that sent an involuntary shudder up her spine—but what they would say: poor desperate middle-age broad caught by freak storm on her way to a blind date. Driven by some misbegotten notion to find love at last in the personal ads. How pathetic.

What a legacy. What a sorry, miserable finish to a moderately successful career. God, Lilly, how nauseatingly maudlin can you get? To hell with that.

Lilly turned the key in the ignition, and after tentative wheezes, the engine caught and rumbled into life.

Good old car, she crooned, you won’t let me make a total ass of myself, will you? C’mon, old faithful, just get us to someplace, anywhere with human life and a phone. As if it could read her lips, the small sedan toiled cooperatively ahead. Belatedly it occurred to Lilly to turn on the radio. There might be something about the storm, about road conditions. Not that she needed any weather guru to tell her they both sucked, but she suddenly needed badly to hear the sound of a human voice.

All those nincompoops out there hell-bent on self-deception.

There was nothing but soft rock, country & western and the usual assortment of idiotic commercials. And ahead of her, on this godforsaken road her vision was now limited to a dwindling patch of windshield. The wipers, clotted with ice, dragged sluggishly back and forth. Whatever feeble noise they made was effectively drowned out. The murderous storm banshee battered her inadequate refuge-on-wheels as if it were a toy, prying with glacial talons at window cracks and vents as if seeking her out for its own dark purpose. Shrieking with glee.

Lilly, wired and rigid with strain, wished she’d listened to everyone’s advice to get a cell phone for the car.

Not so long ago, safe and warm in her cozy home, she’d been bored, anticipating a life-changing adventure. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind.

Paul gasped.

Slick with sweat, stained with tears and spilled wine, he struggled slowly awake.

Shadows of the grotesque lingered.

Stench of the martyred dead clung to his soul like a greasy shroud.

Mouths in skeletal corpse faces frozen black and wide in eternal screams.

His subconscious mind, the betrayer, would take him there for as long as he lived and required sleep. Paul knew he could never hope to escape the mountains of human bones and skulls marginally tethered with flesh, tangled together in a cruel, incomprehensible puzzle. Discarded and forgotten as so much casual debris.

The nightmare, made of bleak history, inflated by tortured guilt, and fueled by his own personal fiends, was his dark companion. Still dreaded after so many years, belonging to him.

From the edge of consciousness a phone buzzed insistently. By the time Paul was able to place the sound in real space, it stopped and was replaced by a thick silence. As the dream fog cleared, other sounds intruded themselves. Faint burr of kitchen fluorescent lamps. Creaks and pings of the old house’s joints adjusting themselves to barometric changes. Somber thrum of the stately grandfather clock from the foyer.

Jesus, the time. Paul glanced at his watch and was propelled completely back to the here and now. Nine-fifteen. Lilly—where was she? She was supposed to be there at seven-thirty. Annoyance at her apparent thoughtlessness was almost immediately replaced by a clenching in his gut. She’s not coming. She never intended to come.

Saddened, Paul roused his lanky six-foot frame from the embrace of the overstuffed easy chair facing the rough stone fireplace. A dwindling fire played over the last chunk of applewood, radiating scant heat, offering no comfort.

Paul padded over to the pair of tall, deep-silled windows overlooking the front porch, his moccasins treading soundlessly across the ancient oriental rug and polished cedar planks.

A curtain of snow greeted his eyes. Wind-whipped and fat with moisture, it shut out everything beyond the weathered porch rails. At least three inches of white stuff sat heavily on every visible surface, save at the westerly side where it was blown into dunes, forming and reforming, glistening. Swellings that moved and changed as he watched, blasted by a wind whose fury he just now heard. Paul put his hand on the intricate pattern of frost creeping inward from the edges of the window panes and shuddered. Neither the cold nor the furious storm could account for the depth of the chill that pierced him.

Lilly. Where was she? If this damned blizzard—because that’s what was happening out there—had caught her on the road, she was in trouble. But where? And what could he possibly do to help? How long had he been sleeping? Was there a chance the snowstorm had started before she left, and she’d had the good sense to stay home? Then why hadn’t she phoned?

Then he remembered the phone waking him. It could have been Lilly calling.

So don’t just stand there like a moron, Paul admonished himself. The idea of calling Lilly and hearing her voice, though it would mean she’d never left Bridgeton, lent him a renewed energy. He hurried out of the dim living room to the kitchen. It was like emerging from the sheltering embrace of a deep cave into the raw sharpness of a strange light-bleached world.

Clock chimes sounded ten times, the resonance breaching the gap between the mellowed woven rug and firelight to the unrelenting cold actuality that was this space he had once created on impulse. And had no reason to regret until this moment.

Wake up and smell reality, Romanof. Give it up. She’s a no-show. And romantic or not, you and your lusting delusions have been stood up. He gave himself a mental shake, realizing he was not ready to risk the phone call.

Regretfully, Paul collected components of the already ruined dinner and tossed them in the garbage. The special sauce he’d prepared with such care, none of it would keep. Not that it mattered, as it would be a long time before such a fiasco would be repeated.

Paul surveyed the immaculate kitchen. The elegantly Spartan design was now merely sterile. Polished granite, sparkling glass and steel were only what they were: cold, lifeless structural elements.

Taking the wine decanter, he moved back into the living room, sinking into the overstuffed armchair in front of the fire. If a wounded soul possessed color, such a hue belonged to this piece of furniture. It was imported from Europe, from a city known by his parents. Paul took solace within its yielding warmth.

CHAPTER TWO

LILLY CLUTCHED THE Styrofoam container as close to her

face as the scalding steam permitted. Waiting for the coffee to cool, she was comforted by the warmth as her frigid fingers began to tingle and thaw.

This was okay. She could deal with this indefinitely. There were worse places to end up on a Saturday night than a Cranberry Farms convenience store. Miles off I-95, who knew how far along some service road. Too far from Bridgeton, Massachusetts and home.

Maybe not too far from her intended rendezvous with Paul, which she’d know once she got someone to give her directions. Whatever good that would do with her car dead in a ditch a mile down the road. She stood there, dripping melted snow, feeling like a Popsicle with all the flavor gone out of it.

This is okay. Really. Good, even. I can hang out here until they close, sipping burnt coffee or inhaling its fumes. Let’s see. There’s plenty to do.

The place was a veritable gold mine of resources. She could catch up on which writers were hanging on the New York Times Best Seller List. A list she’d had fantasies about while dutifully spitting out news stories concisely in column inches, the main point clarified right at the top.

This is okay. Good even. Yup. Could hang out here until the clerk closed up, drinking or sniffing coffee, depending. Investigate the merchandise. Scan the tabloids. Do her horoscope; bet it would tell her it was not a great time to be taking auto trips. She could sneak a peek at the forbidden picture papers, get a handle on who was doing what to whom in Tinseltown. Find out once and for all if aliens had landed.

Junk food. Wow, when was the last time I gave that subject serious respect? This is a primo opportunity if ever there was one.

Studying the shelves upon shelves of gooey cakes and rainbow-colored candies, Lilly was alarmed by an overwhelming urge for cream-filled chocolate cupcakes. It was a taste-aroma compulsion express from her childhood lore of nostalgia. Lilly licked her chapped lips, her mind tasting rich, moist chocolate confection. Ummm. What was the name of those things? Making her way down the snack aisles, Lilly examined brand names with all the passion of an archaeologist intent upon unearthing a lost civilization.

Son of a gun. Here they are: Hostess Cupcakes. They still make them. Wow. Lilly snagged the box and had almost torn through the plastic window when she realized what she was doing. Couldn’t go around glomming goodies before paying. She wasn’t tagging along behind Mom’s shopping cart in Safeway. That was when you could nibble now and pay later. And that didn’t necessarily apply only to sweets.

When had the world grown so suspicious and testy, anyway? Could people of this generation gaze upon a disheveled, well-dressed woman, half-thawed and miserable, zoned out over packaged baked goods—and see a thief?

It was apparently possible. That sales clerk behind the counter could do it. In between a laconic attention to customers, and with nothing more interesting to do than finger a rosy pimple on his chin, he scrutinized her with the burning eyes of a zealot.

She knew the type, had dealt with dozens of his ilk as a reporter. The otherwise nobodies of the world eager for those few moments of glory. For some, just seeing their names in print satisfied. Others were greedier. This clerk was one of them. Oh, yes, Lilly could easily picture him eating up the attention, sucking up to the cops, leering at the TV cameras: ‘Oh, yeah, I just was doing my job, ya know, that’s all. Here I am, business a little slow, so I’m going over the inventory. So I just happenta look up and I seen her. Yeah, caught her right in the act. Kinda a crazy lady, anyhow, I bet. Where’d she get loose from, anyhow, huh?’

And there she would be, huddled in some stinking jail cell, with no one to make that one phone call to, and the Stormtroopers lurking in the shadows, getting hard-ons at the prospect of torturing a confession out of her. For what—indulging a repressed craving for chocolate cupcakes? Madness.

Lilly accepted her change from the greasy youth, furtively wiping her hands on the lining of her coat pockets. She attempted what she hoped was a companionable, yet authoritative demeanor, coaxing facial muscles into a semblance of a smile. There was no point in irritating the kid. Rotten night out there, huh? Not too many people wandering out on a night like this…

Yeah, right, lady. Just the usual mob, he informed her with practiced sarcasm, wanting it to be regarded as a casual put-down. And a few out-a-towners, like you. Whatsamatta, ya lost, or something? He managed to convey disgust, boredom and incredulity all at once. Quite a feat for a being who hadn’t mastered his native tongue, Lilly thought. Damned if she’d ask him for anything. Not even directions, not even the phone number of the local garage for a tow. If there was such a place.

What’s wrong with this picture? She had to ask herself. Scanning paperback titles, going to work on the second—the third, hey, who’s counting—cupcake, licking icing from her fingers with absent-minded relish. Start with that. What was she doing? Beginning a second childhood or escaping into the first? Filling her emotional empty space with sweets, an easier fix than what she’d started out to accomplish this night? Putting off decision making with a virtual blitz of delaying tactics? All of the above?

Okay, Lilly, time for a reality check. It’s late and extremely bad out there. You don’t know where you are. Transportation is non-existent and you don’t seem to be in a hurry to remedy the situation. You are tired, cold and cranky; half OD’d on sugar. No one who counts knows where you are. And that includes your date, over whom you’re in this mess in the first place.

Has he given up on you? Has he sent out the St. Bernards or the Mounties? Launched his own search? More likely, he called your place and kissed you off, as if you never breathed air on this miserable planet. Probably cozying up with a more obtainable prospect. And is that a good thing or a bad thing?

Lilly felt helplessly mired in her own inertia, incapable of making the simplest of decisions, a stranger to herself. Deal with it; you’ve got two choices, she told herself: Call Triple-A and have them tow your car to the nearest service station. Call Paul and tell him you’re sorry, but you won’t be able to make it. You’ll make plans for another time. You’ll get a ride home where you can soak at your leisure in a hot bath and get a good night’s sleep.

And get on with the rest of your life.

Then again. Maybe it made more sense to phone Paul first. He’d get her car started, and she could follow him to his place and resume original plans. But what if the car wouldn’t start? What if the entire messy business turned him off? And she looked like hell anyway. Sleet and snow had turned her hair limp as overdone rigatoni; makeup was a mess.

With an attitude problem to boot. I’m not in the mood anymore, anyhow, Lilly said aloud to no one.

Mood for what, if I may ask?

Lilly could have sworn she was alone.

The guy from out of nowhere plowed ahead.

Sorry if I took you by surprise. It’s just that I thought you could use some help, and I wasn’t quite sure how to approach you… you might take it the wrong way… He seemed to run out of words but did not back off.

Decent-looking guy. Clean cut and dressed from parka to color-coordinated boots right out of L.L Bean. Casual in a studied sort of way. Strong, open face with a serious Yuppie look.

Inspecting the premises, Lilly saw no other patrons. Through the fogged plate glass window, there was only one vehicle visible in the parking lot, a silver-gray Mercedes sedan. Understated elegance in repose, despite recent splatters of mud marring the otherwise pristine finish. The vehicle and the man didn’t appear to belong to one another. But hey, who was she to judge?

That’s okay. Really. How could you butt into a one-way conversation? Never mind. What I mean is, I don’t mind. Now Lilly was feeling self-conscious because this man was being polite, was apparently interested, and well, was appealing in a way she couldn’t pinpoint. Even if he did drive a status symbol, and wasn’t at all her type.

She was suddenly aware of what she must look like. A refugee from Hell. I know I do; why else is he staring and then pretending he’s not? My God. She was still clutching the now-grubby box of cupcakes, a box bearing tell-tale signs of being attacked with more than a little enthusiasm. Do I have chocolate on my face? My teeth? Swift with the written word, Lilly could find nothing to say.

An impasse at the Cranberry Corral.

This was lame as all get out. That’s what she should do, get out. Sure, sure Lilly. Fling aside the chocolatey evidence of your insecurity binge: Goodness gracious, wherever did this come from; I never! Yank on those gloves, button up that classy overcoat with its distinctive wet wool odor and march nonchalantly out into the arms of Mother Nature gone berserk.

Looking outside again—anywhere except at that smiling, staring face of his—she saw that was no overstatement. Not only had Big Ma gone crazy, she’d dealt the Joker—a genuine blizzard—from the bottom of the deck. So, just trek on out there. They’d find her bedraggled body with the spring thaw.

Not a pretty sight.

Why didn’t this man go back where he’d come from instead of confusing an already messy scene? She, at least, had valid reasons for failure to escape, with or without good grace. What was his excuse?

Lilly turned her back to him, facing the paperback racks. She bent as if to adjust her boots and dropped the abused cupcake container on a pile of magazines where a sleek, immaculately groomed model laughed up at her from a glossy cover. While she was at it, Lilly ran her forefinger over her front teeth and scrubbed around her mouth with her wet scarf. Nothing like a bit of native ingenuity.

His smile was still turned on. He wasn’t bad at all, with the kind of looks that didn’t knock you down, but rather, accumulated in effect. She found herself smiling back with no clue as to what came next.

Out of nowhere they both burst out laughing. Two people who had known each other forever, sharing one of life’s little moments. Their own inside joke that mere words were unqualified of approaching. She couldn’t stop laughing. It would pass and then another fit overtook her. School girl with a crush, reduced to gibbering.

Good sport that Mister Nameless was, he humored her by joining in. Prince Charming, whose shining armor hung not from his frame, but sat solidly upon four wheels out on that parking lot. Prince Charming. Click! Prince Charming. Date. Paul. Crapola, she was back where she started.

Prince Charming got the message.

I hope you don’t feel as foolish as I do. Let’s start over, shall we? . . . I’ll take that for ‘yes.’ Okay, I live near here, ‘here’ being an un-incorporated town, more a village, outside of West Kingston…

This is near Kingston? I had no idea, Lilly said.

Hey, you really are lost. He paused, curious. I know almost everyone in the area but couldn’t place you when you came in. Normally I wouldn’t have presumed to initiate a conversation. But the night clerk said he saw you walking up, all soaked and rather dragged-out looking. His words, not mine. So you must have been trudging through this God-awful storm for some time; which means your car must have got stuck, or you wouldn’t be on foot.

Hey, you must be Dick Tracy, Lilly countered. For a brief moment she felt nearly like the old Lilly. The guy sailed right along. Not a blink. Not a smile.

No one in their right mind would be taking a stroll in this weather, now would they? The clerk again. You won’t believe this, and I’m reluctant to repeat such nonsense; but he was of the opinion you’d wandered off from some institution. Ridiculous, I know…

Ridiculous? Talk about understatement. Lilly had to wonder why he would bother mentioning it. The flicker of curiosity in those blue eyes was at odds with the disparaging tone of voice.

For someone who was so timid a few minutes ago, you sure know how to jump right in there. Guess if I don’t watch out, you’ll be wanting to shrink my head, Lilly ventured. "So maybe your name is Sigmund Freud, and not Dick Tracy."

And you have such a way with words. It could be sarcasm, but the warm smile, that disarming smile again, gave the rejoinder a good-natured feel.

So I’ve been told, she conceded. As you were speculating about my possible recent whereabouts?

"Please. That was simply my feeble attempt to break the ice. Please don’t take it personally. The point is, I was merely circling the wagons. Seeking an appropriate means of offering to help with your vehicle—if, that is—it is stuck and you are stranded. And I do apologize. You felt I was rudely staring at you before," blue eyes said.

Lilly kept her mouth shut.

He went right on. "Actually, it wasn’t you. I feel rather silly admitting it, but I was eyeing those sweets you just dumped. They reminded me of when I was a kid and devoured those things like there was no tomorrow. A fit of nostalgia—and a repressed sweet tooth."

Me too, Lilly said. The topic of sweets and mutual recall of an innocent youthful gluttony was pretty much non-threatening. You can relax now, Ms. Paranoia. It was about time names were involved.

Well, so okay. Guess the game’s up, huh? Both of us caught out with a secret lust for chocolate. And to think no one had a clue until now. Anyway, thanks for your offer of help. I think I can use it. My name is Lillian. My friends call me Lilly.

Hi there, Lilly. He extended his hand. It was warm, the grasp solid and uncompromising. His smile had gained intensity, a three-way lamp on the highest notch. Glad to make your acquaintance. I’m Dan. Dan Miller. Listen, would you mind very much if I called you Lillian instead of Lilly? I find it so much more elegant.

CHAPTER THREE

DAN MILLER WATCHED this woman, taking pains to con-

ceal what was swiftly becoming more regard than he liked. Annoying buzz of some exotic insect hovering at the remote edges of his peripheral vision.

On the phone now, she was making her excuses to the unfortunate man whose company she would be keeping if the storm and other forces hadn’t conspired against her. Miller read the displeased glance Lillian cast in his direction; he was too close. It was none of his concern. Back off.

Not the least offended, Dan Miller took a few steps over to a rack of magazines, idly selecting one for perusal. Miller was intrigued by possibilities, unconcerned with a false show of macho pride. He’d come out tonight excited by the perverse weather, disappointed with a challenge so easily met. Figured he may as well stop for a newspaper.

Miller disdained convenience stores; finding them common and over-priced. Would not have entered this one, were it not for the fact all other commercial enterprises had shut down. Even more repugnant had been the brief discussion with the clerk.

A small sacrifice, after all. As he now sensed a skirmish.

Lillian, as he now knew her to be, was not adept at concealment. Turned away from him awkwardly, she struggled to kiss her date off with panache. It was something she was apparently unused to doing.

Lillian. Miller had no taste for silly-sounding nicknames such as this Lilly business. It lacked dignity. It spoke of superficial matters and fleeting moments. Lillian, on the other hand, had mettle, a promise of endurance. Even the sound of the name Lillian had a provocative lilt to it.

Behind the periodical, Miller enjoyed studying Lillian. As if she could hide from him by merely turning her back. Imagine striving for secrecy in a public place where banks of fluorescent lights and the proximity of strangers were nullifying. Miller trained a practiced ear on what little he could pick up, though words were unnecessary. Body language gave the woman away as well as the pauses thick with innocent enough deception.

Why all the drama? She had a ready-made alibi, courtesy of Mother Nature and uncooperative machinery: I’m sorry. But my car broke down and I have to take care of it. Why don’t we make it some other time? More was not required. The flush Miller now saw overtaking Lillian’s face, the vehemence of both her expression and gestures enlightened him further. She was one of those who cared. What another human being needed or counted on meant something to Lillian.

Point to examine at leisure: Would feelings matter to her willy-nilly, no matter the source or would it require a close relationship, one of some intimacy to elicit such regard?

Miller had a suspicion that more than scruples were at work with Lillian and her mystery man. If she truly desired, she could still keep that appointment, however belated. Another glimpse his way. More emphatic gestures, air-stabbing. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

Now, reading anticipation and trust on her face as she hung up the wall phone and turned her attention to him, Miller was satisfied.

And so. The lady in distress has one less item on her agenda to worry about, no? Miller gestured toward the phone. Offered a gallant smile, brimming with sincerity, and made a suggestion. Lillian’s confusion was instantaneous.

Um. Uh, Dan? I’m sorry. But I thought you said before, didn’t you… uh, damn it anyway. Confusion. Doubt. Miller started pulling on his smooth leather driving gloves.

Really. You did offer to help me with my car before. Honestly, you did. Unsure, now. Waiting for him to show her what her next step should be. Not a problem. Silent spaces were not awkward moments to be suffered but rather, extra opportunities.

Dan. I don’t want to cause any problems here. And I’m not an idiot. I can see you’re not exactly thrilled with this. Lilian spread her arms broadly, indicating the two of them, the store, the moronic kid behind the counter who was studying them with slack insolence, the parking lot, the neophyte blizzard. All of it including what she failed to articulate.

"But you see, I can’t help that, can I? None of this. It still doesn’t change the situation. There is a raging storm out there and I’m stranded in the middle of the boondocks two hours from home with no way of getting there. While here you are with that fancy tank on wheels out there. You were the one who initiated this, and you did offer to help. So I’m taking you up on it, okay… there."

Lillian stood her ground, unkempt and unaware of the true drama. Taut cheekbones wearing the high sheen of polished apples, eyes blazing with righteous