The Never-Open Desert Diner Read Online Free Page A

chilly breeze. In the desert, the line between what is dead and what is alive often gets blurred. She appeared to me as a vaporous feminine spirit guarding the gate of a cemetery. I confess, as my headlights aimed toward Price, there was an odd sting of homesickness inside me, though for what exactly, I couldn’t have said.

I felt the comfort of moonlight on my face. The glow from a small digital clock next to my bed marked the long moments of waiting for sleep, moments thinking of her face and the questions that came and went unanswered, questions and answers that were none of my business. Who was she? Where did she come from? How had she come to an abandoned housing development with a cello — a cello without strings? What was she doing for food? Water? Was she alone? How long would she stay, or was she already gone? Did she need my help? I remembered a definition of chivalry I’d heard once: a man protecting a woman against every man but himself.
    Using my toes, I manipulated the moonlight to make shadow puppets on the wall. As entertaining as this exercise was, I had another option.
    After midnight I pulled my ancient Toyota 4×4 pickup onto the asphalt ranchlands of Walmart parking. I was determined to find a CD of cello music, though part of me actually preferred the phantom music the woman had shared with me in silence. Price had just one Walmart and it was open 24/7. During most of the day it was a popular place. The next nearest Walmart was a hundred miles west through the mountains, in Spanish Fork, a sprawling satellite of Salt Lake City along the I-15 corridor. Somewhere in the endless aisles of car batteries, tank tops, and Hostess Twinkies there had to be a CD of cello music. I wasn’t convinced of this, merely hopeful.
    The night-shift workers were busy restocking the shelves under the high artificial lights. No one paid any attention to me as I made my way through the maze of products that filled the aisles. In an ocean of busy blue vests I heard little English or anything else being spoken. Lost in this desert, I was Moses searching for the Promised Land. I located it in a far corner behind a wall of technology.
    A plump young woman in a blue vest with a silver ring in her nose dozed peacefully as she leaned against a display rack of last season’s DVDs. I didn’t want to wake her. She looked like she could use all the sleep she could get. Her face appeared almost childlike.
    The CDs were neatly arranged in categories, each category divided by artist and each artist divided alphabetically. About the only thing that seemed familiar to me was the alphabet. There was no category for cello. There was a category for classical that held only five CDs, four of which were compilations beginning with
The Best of
. I had my choice of the best of Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms, and Chopin. The fifth CD was
Johnny Mathis Sings the Classics
.
    “Hi, Ben.”
    I was startled to hear my name. I turned to see that the young woman had awakened. She exhumed a tired smile. She wore an unborn child around her waist that had previously escaped my notice.
    She placed her hands on her hips and stretched backward. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
    I subtracted the nose ring and the heavy bags beneath her violet eyes. Then I took away the pregnancy and finally the orange streaks in her short black hair. What was left was the daughter of a woman I had dated maybe five or six years before. She had been just a little girl then — just a girl now, even with the nose ring and the rest of life’s additions. The ring in her nose was the only ring in sight.
    “Ginny,” I said, pleased to see her again, or as pleased as I could be given the circumstances. “You’ve grown up.” Innocently, though not sincerely, I inquired after her mother.
    “My mom is a piece of shit.”
    “I wouldn’t go that far.”
    “C’mon, Ben. After what she did to you? You’re disagreeing with me? Or are we just deciding on the size of the