The Pretty Lady and the Cowboy (Songs from the Heart) (20 page)

The road to the casino was at least five more exits away and I had no idea how many miles that was or how many miles I could continue driving before Old Ray ran out of gas completely. The last thing in the world that I wanted to do just now was get off the highway to find a gas station.

Well, actually, no, the very last thing I wanted to do was to try hitchhiking on a deserted stretch of highway at past 11:00 at night. Gritting my teeth and giving myself several dozen mental head slaps, I got off at the next exit. Of course, the first gas station I came to was closed for the night, so I had to follow the unknown road wherever it led, hoping that I’d see a gas station before Old Ray ran dry.

I was almost holding my breath as I drove down the dark road, as if any weight, even the weight of extra oxygen in my lungs, would make the car burn gas more quickly. The little gas pump icon continued blinking. I was nearly in tears when I finally,
finally,
saw a yellow light and the familiar scallop-shaped sign of a gas station. And it was open! I pulled up next to a sign that said “self,” turned off the engine, and hopped out, credit card in hand, to pump my own gas.

Old Ray usually takes about fifteen gallons and I had a serious debate with myself whether to fill the tank all the way or just to stick in a couple of gallons and get back on the road and on to the casino as quickly as possible. I decided to fill the tank—who knew whether I’d find another gas station open at this time of night?—even though it was agony enduring the extra seconds it took as the pump ticked off the trickle of gasoline a maddeningly slow tenth of a gallon at a time.

By the time I climbed back into the car, I was so tense I was practically jumping out of my own skin. The clock said 11:30. Really? That was all? It felt like filling up the gas tank had gone on for hours. I forced myself to take several deep breaths as I put the key in the ignition and turned it. There was the old familiar sput-sput-sput and then… nothing.

Seriously? Nothing?

I tried again. Sput-sput-sput-sput. Sput-sput-sput-sput.

I knew I shouldn’t do it, but in my frustration I put my foot on the gas pedal and pumped hard. Again. And again. Tears of frustration were stinging my eyes. This just was not
fair
.

I saw an attendant coming toward me and quickly wiped my tears away.

“Something wrong, miss?” he asked.

“Car won’t start,” I replied, trying not to scream the words.

“Want me to give it a try?” he asked.
Sure
, I was thinking,
it’ll probably start right up if a
guy
gets behind the wheel.

But I got out and let him slide in. I had nothing to lose. I just wanted to get going. At that moment I didn’t care if that meant a guy was better with my own car than I was. I wasn’t looking to make any sort of feminist statement. I just wanted the engine to start.

He turned the key. Sput-sput-sput-sput-sput-sput. I could hear the engine trying to turn over, but nothing was happening.

“I think you may have flooded it,” he finally said. “Just let it sit for a few minutes and we’ll try it again.”

A few minutes. He might as well have said “a few hours.” He walked over to take care of another customer and I got back into the driver’s seat and tried to keep from banging my head against the steering wheel. I did some hatha breathing exercises from my yoga class. I tried hard to empty my mind as I silently chanted “Om.”

It didn’t work. I thought about that scene from
Goldfinger
where the villain takes some hapless goon’s car to the junkyard and crushes it to the size of a coffee table. I imagined Old Ray crushed down to that size. Ah, the revenge would be sweet!

With the engine off, I could hear the car’s clock ticking. I practically had to sit on my hands to keep myself from trying to start Ray up again. And again and again and again and again and again. I knew that once you’d flooded the gas line, you just had to wait until the car was ready to start. But knowing that is one thing and forcing yourself to have the patience to wait is another.

The clock said 11:47 when I finally let myself try to start Old Ray again. I turned the key, fully expecting to hear the same frustrating sound of an engine that won’t turn over. But by some miracle, the old car started. I didn’t know whether to kiss it or kick it.

In the end, I didn’t do either one. I put it in drive, turned it around, and headed back to the highway as quickly as I could. Maybe, I kept thinking. Maybe there was still a chance.

I remember the year Santa had promised me a two-wheeler, big-girl bike when I sat on his knee in the middle of December. For the next couple of weeks, I must have asked my mother at least twenty times a day if Christmas was going to be the next day. No? Well, how about the day after that? There was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could say, that would hurry time along for me that year.

Driving down the highway alone in near pitch darkness, time seemed to move even more slowly than it had the Christmas I finally found my very own bicycle under the tree. There were no other cars on the road either in front of me or behind me that might keep me even distant company. I lost all sense of time, all notion of distance as I pushed on from one exit to the next and then to the next. I tried to picture Levi’s face, tried to imagine his arms around me, his lips on mine, but all I could see before me was the seemingly endless stretch of roadway.

It was well after midnight when I finally reached the exit that would take me to the casino. At least now there were streetlights illuminating the roads. I was making my way down the long driveway that led to the parking garage, when I noticed a small stream of cars moving in the opposite direction. The stream grew steadily. My heart sank as I realized what that meant: Levi had sung his last encore, the crowd had cheered his performance one last time, and now, some still humming the songs they’d heard, some playing newly purchased CDs on their car stereos, they were headed home.

Somehow I must have believed that the Levi McCrory magic would make everything work out. I kept driving and parked the car in the first empty space I saw. He had to be here somewhere, changing his clothes, packing up, chatting with friends. And
waiting for me
my heart was screaming out.
He had to be there somewhere waiting for me
. I ran through the parking garage to the casino entrance, and kept running toward the concert amphitheater, swimming upstream against the tide of people who were leaving.

The crowd slowed to a trickle as I reached the lobby, then the entrance to the theater. No ushers stopped me or asked for my ticket, but why would they? The show was over. Security guards were still positioned on either side of the stage. What could I say that would convince them to let me go backstage to find Levi? That my heart was breaking? That I loved Levi McCrory? “Sure, honey, you and the other couple of thousand women who were here tonight,” they’d probably say.

Men and women in green cleaning uniforms were coming down the aisles now, pushing huge trash cans on wheels, picking up the programs and food and drink containers that the fans had left behind. Off to the side I could hear an industrial size vacuum cleaner working on the theater carpeting.

On stage, all was dark. The carnival lights that had given Levi’s performance such an air of fun and festivity had all been turned off. The roller coaster that had delivered him onstage was empty. The set still looked like an amusement park, but it had that spooky, deserted feeling theme parks get when the season is over and all the rides are empty and silent.

Without Levi there, the magic was gone. I picked up a program and looked at his picture. It seemed that was as close to seeing Levi as I was going to get that evening.

With a heavy heart, I made my way back through the casino. All the adrenaline that had been pumping as I raced down the highway, ran through the parking garage, and tore through the casino, had left me. I felt deflated, like a party balloon the day after a party. Without the Levi McCrory magic, the casino looked like nothing more than a depressing and lonely place where hundreds and hundreds of people who pinned their hopes on winning the big jackpot were disappointed with sad, steady regularity. Today I was one of them: I had gambled on love and I’d lost.

Somehow I managed to remember where I had left the car. I climbed in, collapsed over the steering wheel, and cried my heart out. I don’t remember ever feeling the despair I felt just then, sitting by myself in Old Ray, not even when my father passed away. I don’t know how long I sat there, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

Then, when I couldn’t cry any more, I found grief giving way to anger. I was just plain mad. I was angry at myself, at Levi, at the world in general, and in particular at the sentimental jerk who had said it was better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. What a dope he must have been.

I put the key in the ignition, fully expecting the car not to start. That would be a fitting end to my evening, waiting alone in the nearly empty parking garage for an AAA tow truck to arrive. But by some miracle, Ray started right up without even a sputter. I headed back to the highway.

By then it was very late, nearly the middle of the night by my usual standards. I drove slowly, only wanting to make it back to my place so I could crawl into bed, pull the covers over my head, and see what I could do about forgetting that this week had ever happened.

The night was dark and out here away from any city lights, I could see a million stars in the clear autumn sky overhead. In my rear view mirror, I could also see another vehicle some way back on the road behind me. I was glad not to be completely alone.

I turned on the radio, slowing down a bit so I could find a classical FM station. I didn’t want to risk hearing the sound of Levi’s voice singing any of the songs I had treasured. And as I slowed down, the vehicle in my rear view mirror grew closer. It was a big bus, maybe taking weary gamblers back home, I thought. But when it pulled up on my left to pass me, I could see emblazoned on its side, in huge ornate letters, the words:

LEVI McCRORY: THE TEN CITY TOUR

I watched the bus as it sped past me into the night, towing behind it an all-too-familiar black limousine.

Jess and I signed the papers and made it official in December. We were partners now, ready to change the world together one runner at a time.

“For better or for worse,” Jess said, hugging me as we left our attorney’s office.

“Well, let’s just make sure it’s for richer not poorer,” I said. But she was right. Our partnership was a marriage of sorts, a joining together toward a common goal.

“You got that right,” she said. “Here’s to fame and fortune, heavy on the fortune!” We frequently joked about our “when we’re rich” fantasies, but we both felt lucky to be doing something we loved and we knew that money really wasn’t the object. We shared a kind of missionary spirit about running and it seemed to be infectious—our clients came back regularly, and they invited friends who invited more friends.

Jess and I had invested heavily in redesigning the store to include our Wall of Heroes. We were proud of all the names of famous runners who had visited the store and left a few words of inspiration and often an autographed photo on our wall.

And there were the names of those everyday heroes who had achieved ordinary and often extraordinary goals—the editor of the local newspaper who had discovered that running could help ease the tension of constant deadline pressures or the team of mothers with newborns who ran together daily, the infants lulled to sleep by the motion of their jogging strollers. And many, many more.

I’m proud to say that Ally’s name was on the wall. She had always been faster than I was when we were kids, always beat me at tag, always left me behind to be the “rotten egg.” I had fanned the flames of that old competition a bit and soon she was beating the pants off me in local races.

And, of course, that was helping with her other problem. She’d had two relapses with an especially bad one after a Homecoming Weekend party, but she was moving in the right direction at last. She helped out at The Finish Line a couple of times a week and did particularly well working with the younger runners. Dan had done a great job of teaching her the subtleties of fitting running shoes and I had a feeling it wouldn’t be too long before he asked her out. I hoped she’d say yes.

Jess and I together had negotiated the new terms of our lease. There had been an increase, but not as large a one as the landlord had originally suggested. We had agreed to the slight hike in rent with the understanding that there would be no further increase over the next three years.

And then we’d just hunkered down and worked like crazy. We did as much as we possibly could ourselves. We wrote our own advertising, kept our own accounts, designed our own window displays, and even took to doing our own cleaning so we could save and reinvest as much as possible. In theory, we each took one day a week off; in reality, we were both there almost constantly. Even on my day off I’d almost always look in after my morning workout. And then I’d somehow end up staying, organizing the stockroom, fixing the sink, doing any of a hundred and one things on a never-ending list.

Being busy easily kept me from doing two other things: one, dating, and two, even thinking about dating. I’d gone out on a couple of runs with guys I knew from the gym, and I could tell that with just the slightest hint on my part they’d ask me out. But I never gave them a hint of any sort. They were running buddies, and that was all I wanted, all I could handle.

I tried not to think about Levi, but when I did, I felt like a fairy-tale princess in a sort of fractured fairy tale. I’d had been kissed by the prince and awakened to the magic of romance, and then I’d been left in the forest to fend for myself while the prince rode off on his next quest.

Okay, maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but there was something about seeing Levi’s bus disappearing down the highway that dark October night that had made my heart close down. I couldn’t risk romance. Maybe someday I’d be able to, but not yet.