It’s only about fifteen miles from the motel in Hawthorne to Bradford, and they were familiar miles to him from the days of his youth. It was also the first moments he’d had to be truly alone in the time since he’d met Sharon the night before, and his first time to really reflect on things without interruption. Bob was a man who liked his peace and solitude; he prized this opportunity to contemplate these extraordinary few hours.

Sharon was one of a kind; he’d always known that. Yes, she came across as scatterbrained, and for that matter, when you got right down to it, she was. He could remember back to high school when people had called her an “airhead” and there was probably some truth to that. Yet, even in those days he’d known there was more to her, and he’d been pleasantly surprised to find out that he was still correct in that assumption twenty years later.

While he had made the offer for her to come and live with him, it had been more in the tone of an offer to help out an old friend he really liked. That decision had been heavily loaded with the sexual charge from the last few hours: she’d proven to be an excellent lover, enthusiastic and responsive. He’d never had a woman quite like that in the past and it was quite refreshing, considering the kind of companionship he’d had to pay for.

Yet, paying for companionship had its rewards. He remembered a distant conversation, years ago in the bar of the Redlite Ranch, his favorite brothel out in Nevada, the one that Jennlynn apparently now owned in part. “I don’t feel that I’m paying for sex,” a guy on the next bar stool had commented. “I’m just paying her to go away afterward.”

That remark had seemed rather cynical back when it had been made, yet as he headed out of Hawthorne, it seemed to have a ring of truth to it. Maybe the guy had a point after all. Bob was a loner at heart, and living alone had never troubled him deeply – but he’d now made a casual offer to share his house and his bed with a woman, one who though he cherished her deeply, also had the capacity to tear his prized solitude and peace to shreds.

Now that he was able to be by himself and think about it in the clear blue light of day, he began to have some second thoughts that he really hadn’t contemplated when he’d made the offer. Sharon was a friend, yes, and an excellent lover. But would she be able to give him at least some of the space he needed to be able to keep his soul at peace, to contemplate, to relax? It was a darn good question, and one that he didn’t have an answer to just then.

He’d lived by himself ever since he’d been out of the army, sixteen years now. Even in college, he’d been tired enough of living around people that he’d gotten a small studio apartment off campus, just so he wouldn’t have to put up with a roommate who might have different ideas about peace and quiet. It had seemed like a good idea at the time and so it had proved to be – starting out as a freshman, he was four years older than the other people in his classes, and certainly four years wiser. Those kids, four years younger than he’d been – well, they were kids, out on their own in the world for the first time and trying out the limits of their freedom. Although he didn’t experience it, he heard the tales of all the hassles with roommates partying until all hours of the night, of excesses and irritations. He’d survived those years in his own life in a barracks, had been glad to have them behind him and he had been glad that he didn’t have to face more of them.

He’d stayed in the studio apartment for years, even after he’d graduated from the college and started working there full time. After several years it had begun to seem cramped, although still efficient; since his bank balance was then in excellent shape, he’d gone looking for a larger and more permanent thing. A little over ten years before, he’d bought a medium sized house in an older neighborhood, big enough for him and probably big enough for a partner if one should ever happen to show up. None had, and until now it had rarely bothered him. In that period he had come to realize that he was a loner at heart, with all that implied. The house had proved to be an excellent place to be himself, a place to read and contemplate, to write a little, to think about things that needed real thought. Now, on a whim, he’d invited someone to come live with him and destroy that solitude he so cherished. Had his head been the one doing the thinking, or had it been his dick?

And Sharon, nice woman though she was, and tigress in bed that she’d proved to be, was certainly going to raise hell with that solitude if she moved in with him. He was surprised that her constant talking had bothered him as little as it had so far – in fact, it had seemed refreshing and lively. But how would he hold up to it hour after hour, day in and day out? There had been a couple times the previous night that it had verged on being too much, but he thought that he understood the reasons why at the time – she was using the talking to stall off a decision, a habit of hers that he thought he understood. He remembered that from high school, too – it was surprising that he remembered it so well – and was surprised that he’d picked up on it so quickly after twenty years of separation.

She certainly had her own reservations about moving in with him, over reasons that he felt hadn’t been touched on, whatever they might be. Maybe she was more perceptive than he’d thought. Had she detected his passion for his privacy and solitude? Probably, he’d been known for it in high school and that part of him hadn’t changed so much. Did her misgivings revolve around the fact that she was aware she could cause resentment if she pushed him to change his ways? It wasn’t impossible, he realized, and if that was the case she might well be right. After all, she hadn’t been able to get along with her own roommates very well over the years, to hear her tell about it, and when you got right down to it she seemed to prefer living by herself, as well. Or, was that just because she drove roommates who didn’t understand her, right out of their living skulls? It didn’t take a lot of imagination to understand how that could happen, and if he was right, then she probably understood better than he had expected. She was right to have reservations, and he had to give her credit for being perceptive about them.

The thoughts rolled over in his mind without great order all the way to the familiar streets of Bradford.

Although he’d grown up there, Bob hadn’t spent much time in town since he’d left to join the army, almost exactly twenty years before – probably not more than a month or two combined over that period. Yet the town was a part of him, had impressed itself on him since birth, and would always be a part of him.

Really, Bradford was not a lot different than hundreds, even thousands of small country towns that lay alongside an Interstate highway exit. Traffic flowed by in an incessant stream, and the town made little impression on the passers-by. It lay out in that vague hinterland where TV reception from either Detroit or Chicago was a sometimes thing, at least in the days of TV antennas. In baseball season, the TVs were about equally likely to be tuned to the Detroit Tigers, or to one of the Chicago teams. Things were a little less evenly divided in football season – while the Bears and the Lions had about equal numbers of fans, the town was a lot closer to South Bend than it was to Ann Arbor, so the Notre Dame fans easily outnumbered the Wolverine fans. It was located on I-67, the first exit north of the Indiana state line, so while a Michigan town it had a great deal of Indiana influence.

Unlike many other Southern Michigan towns, Bradford didn’t live or die directly on the success of the auto industry. There were a couple of parts plants that fed the industry, but they weren’t large. The big industry in Bradford was big indeed: a regional distribution plant for General Hardware Retailers was far and away the big employer, with a warehouse and sorting facility that was over forty enclosed acres. Surrounding it was a huge parking lot on which hundreds, if not thousands of semi-trailers were routinely parked; a steady stream of them were always coming off the Interstate and proceeding into the center, while similar numbers were heading out to the Interstate. It was an ideal location; Interstate 80/90 and the Indiana Turnpike were only a few miles south, and there were connections to more Interstate highways only a few miles off. Bob’s parents had both worked at General for almost as long as he could remember, they were approaching retirement; at one time he’d figured his destiny would be to run a fork truck out there, or something. Only chance had taken him into the army, then to Colorado, and for the most part he was just as glad.

In common with many others of his class, and many other young people from small towns across the country, Bob had seen no real future in his home town and had looked forward to the day he could “take the on-ramp” in the local slang, and get out to where the cities were more exciting and the lights were brighter. It had worked for him; while to many people Fort Collins was still small-town America, it was a good twenty times the size of Bradford. As far as he was concerned, that qualified as big city and bright lights. The countryside around Fort Collins might not be as lush and green as the Michigan countryside even in August, but it had the Rocky Mountains right in the background, visible, in fact, from his bedroom window, and that made more than adequate compensation.

Coming in from Hawthorne meant that Bob was coming into Bradford from the east, the side away from the Interstate, and thus the side that had seen the lesser amount of impact from the highway over the years. Out on the edge of town there were some smaller local businesses, but none of the chain fast food places that infested the area out around the interchange and the General plant. Once there, it was a good example of the better parts of small-town Midwestern America: the town was for the most part well kept and green. Bob knew there were a few dumpy houses, but they were off the main drag through town. Downtown there were a couple blocks of business district; in recent years, this had grown when the local grocery store had bought up much of a block of houses and small businesses, torn them all down and built a huge expansion that included several complementary businesses. These included a General Hardware outlet in addition to the supermarket, and other stores like a pizzeria, a pharmacy, a tanning salon and a bank. The businesses along Main Street had changed a fair amount in the twenty years he had been gone; while some remained much the same as ever, there were even fewer retail sales stores in the older part of downtown than he had remembered from high school days.

For the most part, Bradford could have been anywhere in much of the nation, but like all towns, Bradford had a few individual characteristics all their own. In reality, it had been a good place to live, a good place to grow up – and for most of his class, a good place to be from. Only a handful of members of the Class of ’88 still lived in or around town; amazingly enough, they considered themselves the lucky ones.

Bob’s parents lived on Maple Grove, through town and three blocks off the Main Street, in the same house he had grown up in. Even after having been gone from it, for the most part, for twenty years, in many ways it hadn’t changed much, and he would have been surprised if it had. It was a two-story bungalow that probably dated back to the twenties, a nice brick house with pleasant looking but fake English half timbering. He wheeled the Kia into the driveway, and noted without a great deal of surprise that his parents weren’t there; at this time on a Sunday morning they’d be at church. If he had gotten back in time last night he would have probably been with them, although the only time he went to church anymore was when he happened to be in Bradford on a Sunday. Bob thought of himself as a Christian but not energetically so, and had issues with the religion preached at the Bradford Disciples of the Savior Church that his parents attended. Interestingly enough, the pastor was Jennlynn’s father, and Bob had understood there had, unsurprisingly, been a great deal of family dissension over her career choice, although he understood that much of it had been healed over in the years since the hijacking. Still, his parents reported that it was rare that the preacher’s daughter was favorably mentioned from the pulpit.

He was relieved to find his parents were gone. At the moment, he didn’t want to tell them he was strongly considering living in sin with one of his classmates. They wouldn’t have been noticeably negative in front of her, but he would have sensed their feelings. They would have been hospitable to Sharon and would have invited them both to stay for dinner, and the afternoon would have been filled with talk. That would be time purely wasted, time being so tight already, if he was going to fly back to Colorado in the morning, a decision that hadn’t been made yet and certainly remained as an option. He desperately needed the time to think, to talk with Sharon some more, to reach towards a decision, not that it absolutely had to be made in the next few hours.

And, he realized as he got out of the car, a decision for her to move in with him didn’t have to be made all that quickly. The offer had been made; it was perfectly feasible for him to take the flight back in the morning like he had planned, and she could follow along at some later date if she desired. It was something that he’d have to bring up to her as soon as he could. He saw her pull up to the curb in front of the house, and went out to talk with her for a moment.

“The folks aren’t home,” he told her. “I wasn’t expecting it right now, anyway. I’ll just head in and gather up my stuff, and leave a note so we don’t have to be long. You can come in if you want, or stay in the car.”

“Oh, I’ll come in,” she said. “I need to use the bathroom, if nothing else. I don’t know what it is, but it seems like as soon as I get in a car to go someplace I need one almost right away.”

“Suit yourself,” he smiled.

“Won’t your parents be sorry to not say goodbye to you?” she asked as she got out of the car.

“Hard to say,” he replied as she closed the car door and walked up the sidewalk beside him. “We had a couple good days, and they knew I might not be back until this morning, and they know what my schedule is like. If they went to church instead of waiting for me, then it doesn’t matter to them. I’m getting anxious for something to eat, so I’d just as soon do this so we can head on out to the Chicago.”

“I’m getting hungry for something myself,” she replied as he opened the door with the key hidden in the porch light, where the same key had been hidden since sometime when he was a small child. In a moment, they were inside. “Bathrooms are upstairs and downstairs,” he said. “Your choice.”

“Oh, I’ll follow you upstairs,” she grinned. “I’m curious to see what your room is like.”

“Just a room now,” he said. “Most of the stuff that I had in it when I actually lived here has long since been hauled to the landfill. There’s no individuality left to it anymore.” He led the way up the stairs, and she followed.

“I suppose,” she said. “My room at home remained much the same for many years after I left Bradford. In fact it didn’t get totally cleaned out until my folks moved to Florida. I was home a few months before that happened, and since they knew the move was coming they had me go through the room and separate out anything I wanted to keep. I was really surprised at how little there was that actually meant anything to me after all that time. Oh, there were things of sentimental value and I kept some of those, but I suppose most of it is right next to yours in the county landfill.” She let out a sigh, shook her head, and continued. “I’ve lived so many places and moved so much now that I think I’ve learned to not accumulate possessions, since if I do, they’re just belongings that I’ll have to move again and again. When I went to Pusan, I only had a luggage allowance of eighty-four pounds, and I was able to pack for two years in just two suitcases and a carry-on. Of course, I had to buy things while I was there, but I threw away most of what I had when I left, so I still had eighty-four pounds of stuff when I came back. It was interesting to learn just how little you really need to live on.”

“I sort of had the same experience when I was in the army and spent a few months in the Gulf on the contents of one Army duffel bag and a small AWOL bag,” he said. “Of course, I didn’t need civilian clothes, so that simplified things. The bathroom is down the hall to your right.”

“Thanks,” she replied. “I’ll be back in a minute.”

He headed to his room, or, what at least had once been his room. He hadn’t done a great deal of unpacking; his suitcase was open on the dresser, and most of his things were still in it, except for a small pile of dirty underwear on a bedroom chair. Since he really had only been planning on being gone for a few days, he hadn’t needed a great deal of clothing and hadn’t packed much. He gave a brief thought to changing out of the clothes he had on, but decided against it – mostly because he realized that if they decided to stay together for the next few days his supply of clean clothes was going to be limited. Not changing would mean that he could at least stretch out the need to find a Laundromat or a big box store for another day, and it might not be necessary at all.

With that decision made, packing was a quick process, lasting only a couple minutes. The only concession he made to changing clothes was to take off his tie, throw it in the suitcase, and unbutton his collar. It was going to be warm today, too warm for a suit jacket, but he could throw it on the seat of the Kia for the trip to Detroit and figure out what to do with it later.

He was making a last pass around the room, trying to see if there was anything he had forgotten, when he heard about the last noise he’d expected come down the hall from the bathroom: an enormously noisy fart. It was loud, and it went on a long time, making him wonder just how bad her gut had been wrenching to have a blast like that bottled up inside her. He mentally considered teasing her about it later, and decided against it as he closed his suitcase, ready to go. He took it in his hand, headed out into the hall, and as he passed the bathroom door just said, “I’ll meet you downstairs. I’ve still got to write a note.”

“OK,” he heard her stay through the closed door. “I’ll be along in a couple minutes.” He took a step, and heard another massive gutrumbler of a fart. It was hard to say what she must have been eating to cause gas like that, but he would have bet that it hadn’t been Chinese.

He headed on down the stairs, set the suitcase down by the front door, and went into the kitchen, where he knew there was usually a notepad sitting on the kitchen shelf. There had been one there since boyhood, and there was no logical reason for that to have changed, either. Sure enough, it was there; he grabbed it, sat down at the kitchen table, pulled a pen from his shirt pocket and began to write:

“Mom and Dad: Sorry I missed you, but I wound up staying over at the reunion like I thought I might have to do. I met a lot of the kids and had a good time, better than I expected. After thinking it over, I decided to head on up to Metro right away, rather than sticking around. There’s a couple things I’d kind of like to do up that way anyway. I’ll call in a few days. See you again the next time I’m around – Bob”

That ought to do it, he thought. It didn’t say anything about Sharon, but since nothing firm had been decided yet there was no point in raising the issue for them to kick around. If it happened, it happened, and it would be a done deal when they heard about it.

He was just finishing up when Sharon came down the stairs. “Thanks for letting me use your parents’ bathroom,” she said with a smile that indicated a degree of relief. “I’m afraid that it was getting to the point of being needed.”

Once again Bob thought about teasing her about the noise of that fart, and once again he dismissed the idea without saying a word. The time might come for it but now was not the time. “Good,” he replied. “I’m done here, we might as well get on out to the Chicago.”

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