My Deja Vu Lover (19 page)

  
“Sure, maybe we can find her bones and dig her up,” I said.

  
“Huh?”

  
“We’re both broke,” I pointed out.

  
“Oh that,” he said so offhand that I thought his insanity was showing. “Macbeth has enough frequent flyer miles for you and me.”

  
“And he’s offered to give them to you. What a sweetheart.”
 
I was joking.

  
Apparently Tom wasn’t. “Yes, he said for me to use them.”

  
“Why?”

  
Tom kind of avoided looking at me, played with the pillow fringe instead. “First, they have to be used this month. And second, Mac’s worried about you.”

  
“Did he tell you he dragged me to a parking lot and forced me to drive his car?”

  
“Yeah, he said something about that. But what’s got him worried is, he thinks you’re missing the line between reality and wherever.”

  
“Because I couldn’t put the car in reverse?”

  
“Because you’re still afraid to drive. He thinks you’re still having nightmares about the car crash. So we both agreed a trip to Minnesota might be good, let you take a look around, find out if there ever was this Millie person.”

  
“A mental health treatment for crazy April?”

  
He did his Tom thing, grinned, then reached for me and hugged me. Maybe I should have argued, refused the offer, but what if the answers to a whole lot of questions were back in that little farm town?
 

  
Also, maybe if Graham phoned, and Cyd told him I was off on a trip, it would be like a slap up the side of the head for him, maybe wake him up, make him think about what he was losing if he lost me.

  
Back in my high school years I would have pulled a stunt like that to make a boyfriend jealous. Older and wiser, I knew it wouldn’t work with Graham. Either he loved me and we would find solutions, or he didn’t and I would cry myself to death.

  
“Okay, Tom. Probably be more fun than going to job interviews.”

  
“So nice to see a girl thrilled at the prospect of a trip with me.”

  
“Better you than Mac.” At least Tom wouldn’t trick me into driving a car.

  
Like Tom, I needed to get out of town. Unlike Tom, I wasn’t trying to break off an affair. And because he was Tom and we’d been friends forever, he didn’t ask. We’d been lovers sporadically but friends forever.

  
“We need to take heavy clothes,” he said.

  
“Flannel pajamas,” I said and he snickered.

CHAPTER 19

  
Heavy clothing was a brilliant plan. I borrowed Cyd’s down jacket plus a wool scarf that someone had sent her a couple of Christmases ago and was still in its gift box. From the back of a closet I dug out snow boots that I hadn’t worn in years.

  
And here I had thought Seattle was cold. Tommy and I came off the plane through the airport, all our gear stuffed into backpacks so we could avoid the luggage pickup, and followed the exit signs to Eskimo hell. I think they’re the folks who believe hell really is frozen over. Whoever.

  
My blood turned to ice in my veins. My muscles went into clench mode. I couldn’t move or breathe, except, I could see my breath so I must have been breathing.

  
A mist cloud came out of my mouth and hung in front of me until I managed to pull the hood of Cyd’s jacket half-closed across my face. I wrapped the scarf over that, leaving just enough room to peer out. Any second I expected ice cycles to form on my eyelashes. With Tom dragging me by my elbow, I managed to make it to the rented car Mac had reserved for us.
 

  
Sitting in the plane, I’d had no idea what was happening to the temperature. The plane had been stuffy and noisy, drinks lukewarm, food nonexistent, about what I expected.

  
We’d both had a sleepless night of tossing together necessities and then weeding out to keep our luggage small and light. On the plane we didn’t talk much because we were both in mild shock about the fast decision. Somehow trips are better when planned far in the future, I guess.

  
Neither Tom nor I think that far ahead, so when Mac said he could provide tickets, we kind of did a vague discussion about when.

  
“Any time is okay with me,” Tom had said.

  
I had a job interview for a job I didn’t want, so I said sure, tomorrow even, because both of us thought that wasn’t really possible.

  
Don’t reservations take time?
 
But literal Macbeth snapped open his cellphone, marched into the next room, and ten minutes later came back to tell us we were on the redeye that left in four hours so be ready in two and he would drive us out.

  
Macbeth managed a swing-by of Tom’s place so Tom could run in, grab his backpack and his warmest coat.

  
“Get everything?” Mac asked when Tom returned to the car.

  
“Oh sure, even left a note on the fridge saying I was leaving and would phone in a day or two.”

  
On the plane we both drifted in and out of short naps, me only marginally uncomfortable, Tom with his knees folded up almost to his chin and one elbow in my ribs.

  
After we picked up the rental car at the Minneapolis airport, I kept saying, “Find the heater, turn on the heater,” my teeth chattering.

  
“It’s on. Give it a few minutes,” Tom said. “Watch the exit signs, oh never mind, I see it.”

  
When the heater kicked in, and I figured it was some kind of blast furnace to do the job in such a climate, I pushed my hood back and rubbed my face. Somewhere the sun was above the horizon but it wasn’t doing a lot for me. It reflected off of snowy roadsides and glittered on the windshield until we turned west and then it made a blur of the rear window.

  
Unlike Seattle, during its two days a year of snow, here the pavement was clear. Oh yeah, I suppose Minnesota towns actually own snowplows. If Seattle owns snowplows, they’re always busy up in the mountain passes to the east and somehow never make it to Seattle streets. Instead, the TV announcers spend all day, that two days a year, reading off lists of school closures and event cancellations.

  
“People actually live here, huh?” I said.

  
Tom squinted against the glare. “The name was Millie Pedersen, right?
 
Do you get no clue from that?”
 

  
I yawned and slid down in my seat. “Big population of Scandinavians? So the Vikings felt right at home here. Hmmph. If this was my previous life, somewhere in transition my blood thinned.”

  
With my booted feet propped on my backpack, I dozed while Tom drove. When the car stopped, I woke. Every muscle protested. A whole lot of groaning accompanied my effort to straighten out and sit up.

  
Peering out the window, I saw we were parked on a narrow street lined with snow-topped cars and iced trees. A row of storefronts ran about a two block length, bookended between a couple of steepled churches and a park with a shivering bandstand. Beyond the small business district, tall old houses with peaked roofs and wide front porches huddled in the centers of huge lots, deep in snowdrifts.

  
“This is it. Millie Town,” Tom said. “Next stop?”

  
“Newspaper? Library? Motel with a hot shower?”

  
“I’ll opt for the last one,” he said, much to my relief.

  
He’d come along as a favor to me. Or maybe simply because he was bored. Or maybe he really did need to get out of town and easy reach of Sandra. Whatever, I appreciated his company and wanted to give him choices.

 
 
We pulled into what seemed to be the only gas station and were told there were three motels on the outskirts. Head south twenty minutes or some such instructions.

  
The attendant added, “We got a nice hotel downtown, one block over.”

  
Tom and I looked at each other. We knew Seattle hotel rates.

  
“Guess not,” I said, wondered if directions based on a twenty minute drive would really take us anywhere, and changed my mind. “Tom, we could at least ask.”

  
“Can’t charge for that,” he agreed.

  
The hotel was exactly where the gas station attendant had said it would be, a good omen. It looked nice from the outside, brick and wood, a lot newer than most of the stores, and like the streets, the parking lot was scraped clean.

   
A double entry kept out the cold. A second set of doors opened into a cozy lobby. Oversized chairs and couches faced a fireplace where the flames roared and I was ready to curl up on a couch forever.

  
Mac had given us our plane tickets, not his credit card. Okay, ask, I decided.

 
 
“Nice front room with two double beds, a street view or I can put you on the back for a little less, but, hon, the trains can get loud about midnight,” the desk clerk said.

  
“How much for a front room?” I asked, my elbows on the counter.

  
Standing behind me, his hands on my shoulders, Tom said, “The front room sounds fine.”

  
Here in the backside of farmland, the rates were embarrassing, they were so low, and I had a fleeting doubt about what we’d find upstairs.

  
Key in hand, we trudged up the open flight of stairs on the far side of the lobby.

  
Tom said, “Would you be more comfortable with separate rooms? We could afford that.”

  
We had this long time understanding about sleeping arrangements, which put lovemaking out of bounds when either of us was involved with someone else. However, we’d never played that game in a hotel.

  
“She said there were two beds. Let’s see how small the room is,” I said, visualizing a narrow room with two twin beds against the wall and barely space to walk between them.
 

  
What we found on the second floor was a large warm room with two double beds and lots of space, including dresser, TV, table and easy chairs. Add to that thick quilts, flouncy edges on everything, and a spotless bathroom. There were even baskets of all the fun little goodies in fancy packages, shampoo, moisturizer, shoe shine cloth, mending kit.

  
“Oh yeah, I can rough it here,” I told him. “At this price, I may move in permanently.”

  
“Local salaries probably match the prices. Hey, you hungry?”

  
And I was. We dumped our backpacks, cleaned up, added another layer of socks and sweaters and headed out in serious search of food. The search was serious. The food wasn’t. The hotel dining room was open for dinner only, hours away.

  
The downtown was about the size of a strip mall and included two bars where the food consisted of potato chips and peanuts. We went in to check. They both recommended the one coffee shop in town.