Lola put the car in drive and hit the freeway. Hours crept by, as endless as the yellow, rolling wheat all around her. Clouds skidded across the blue sky and as she drove into the afternoon, they began to gather, low and gray on the horizon.
Everything had darkened by the time she reached the Ozarks, even though it was only late afternoon. She scanned her way through radio static, searching for a weather report. Thunder rumbled in the distance. The map got fuzzy around the mountains, and she didn’t want to get caught in the rain looking for lodging.
She pulled off the road at the first place she saw, her tires chomping as she found a place to park. In her Hey Joe hoodie and a jacket, the warmest things she’d brought from California besides her trench coat, she walked up to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall bar with a lit Fat Tire sign in the window.
Inside, Lola blinked a few times to adjust her eyes to the dark. It was empty—nobody drinking his dinner yet. The interior wasn’t an exact replica of Hey Joe, but they were cut from the same cigarette-burned cloth. She walked up to the bar. Johnny’s third favorite Led Zeppelin song, “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You,” played in the background as if someone’d forgotten to turn the music back up after a conversation. Some postcards of Midwest attractions were tacked on the walls. The retouched photographs were more vivid than what Lola’d seen with her own eyes. The real thing had been good, but it could always be better.
Lola hadn’t contacted anyone, though she’d often thought about it. A message that she was fine. Better than fine. Amazing. She was seeing things that were good enough for postcards, learning about the country she’d grown up in—and herself too.
Above a wall of hard alcohol was a photo of bikini-clad women in snow boots and furry hats.
* * *
It may be freezing outside, but Missouri is still the hottest state in the U.S.A.!
* * *
She smiled. In Denver, she’d almost bought that same postcard with Colorado instead of Missouri. It would’ve made Beau laugh. She looked forward to a time when her tinges of nostalgia would die off, and she could fully enjoy Beau’s suffering.
The bar served food, only three items—hamburger, hotdog or cheese fries. And then a list of beer sorted by draft or bottle. Lola hadn’t eaten since Kansas. Sometimes, during long stretches in the car, she’d wonder what would’ve happened if she’d walked into that gas station weeks earlier and Beau hadn’t had a gun to his head. If they’d bought a couple pieces of candy and scarfed hotdogs on the way back to the hotel.
She slid a hand along the pitted lip of the bar. The wood wasn’t as smooth as Hey Joe’s. Or maybe that was just how she remembered it. It wouldn’t have mattered—the hotdogs. Beau would’ve gotten what he’d wanted from her one way or another. If not that night, then the next. Or the next. Beau never gave up. Did he?
Lola hadn’t seen the look on Beau’s face when she’d disappeared. With his control issues, it would be the not knowing that’d quickly drive him insane—where had she gone? How? Would she be back? When? Those questions, over and over, until he didn’t know what was stronger—the hurt or the anger. Until he was teetering between never wanting to see her again and questioning how he could go on without her.
Lola turned to leave the bar but stopped. A tall, burly man dressed in black blocked the doorway. He stomped his leather boots on the ground, shaking out his long, brown-and-gray-streaked hair. “Help you?” he asked.
She checked over her shoulder, absentmindedly patting her wallet in her pocket. The alarming amount of cash she had in her car and on her person was never far from her mind. Nor were strange, oversized men who might be on the lookout for women traveling alone. “No. I was just on my way into town.”
“Better get a move on then.”
She edged around him, glancing sidelong at the patches on his motorcycle cut before deciding to keep her eyes on his face. This guy looked meaner than the diluted versions of him she’d served in Hollywood. He shifted to let her by.
With her first step outside, something dripped on the crown of her head. The sky slumped, resting on the mountains. A white spec floated down and landed on her face. “What the…?”
“First snow of the season.”
She glanced back at the man, who leaned in the doorway. “Snow?”
“Yep.”
She’d only seen machine-made snow once—on the ground in Big Bear. This was something else completely. More flakes drifted down on her, glitter in a snow globe, dampening the top of her hair. She put her tongue out to catch some. It was natural that something other than rain fell from the sapphire-gray sky, but it was foreign to her—like reading about music and then hearing it for the first time.
“It’s beautiful.” Lola blinked crystals off her lashes. “I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s—”
“Goddamn obnoxious. You ever shoveled this shit? Plus, it brings on the insomnia, the cold.” He paused. “But you know how that is.”
She squinted at him over her shoulder. “No. I sleep fine.”
“Dark circles don’t lie.” He disappeared back into the bar.
She touched her cheek—she’d noticed them too. All that driving left her restless at night.
The parking lot was empty. Her car glowed red against the muted gravel, the buzz in the air tainted by the smell of petroleum. For eight days, she’d convinced herself staying under the radar was necessary. She’d barely spoken to anyone. She wanted to tell someone how amazing it was that she’d never seen this before. Lola pulled her jacket closer around her and shivered.
The magic of the moment was short-lived for the same reason her one-handed picture while crossing the Golden Gate Bridge had come out blurry. She was alone. Beau could’ve been standing by her side for her first snowfall if he hadn’t been so proud and childish. He was a grown man behaving like a boy who’d had his feelings hurt. Was that what he thought of Lola, that she’d taken her toys and disappeared in the middle of the night?
They hurt themselves to hurt each other. It was almost as if Lola could look past the pain when she saw it that way—she just wasn’t sure she was ready to.