I’d spent the better half of my summer bartending at a golf course in a podunk corner of Connecticut —never again,polo-clad men wielding nine-irons were shockingly bad tippers — followed by a short stint at a beachside cafe in Rhode Island for all of September, where most of the patrons were boozey frat-boy types who left sand on every conceivable surface and pee on the toilet seats.
Serious yuck.
Now, it was late October, and funds were running dangerously low. Morale, somehow, even lower.
“Car trouble?”
I ducked out from beneath the hood where I’d been bent and turned toward the direction of the voice. A woman about my age was standing on the sidewalk, staring at me with unconcealed concern. I returned the favor by staring back with unconcealed confusion — not at her question, at her appearance. She looked fresh off a boat from Middle Earth. (Rivendell, specifically.) Her dark hair was plaited into about a thousand tiny braids. She was wearing a semi-sheer, moss green dress and dainty sandals. A pair of gauzy, gold-dusted fairy wings were hooked over her shoulders, fluttering in the evening breeze. If Legolas had stepped out of the shadows behind her, I wouldn’t have batted an eye.
Was it October 31st already?
I thought there was at least another week until the costumed candy-palooza known as Halloween. Then again, I wasn’t really in a position to judge anyone’s outfit. In my ancient denim cut-offs with the ultra frayed hems, a flowy white peasant blouse I’d purchased secondhand, and pair of platform leather sandals that gave me a much needed lift of two additional inches, I was dressed more for summer than a New England fall night. Not exactly weather appropriate. (But, then, I’d always run warm. I’d been confounding doctors since infancy, reading steadily at 103.1 instead of the typical 98.6 no matter how many thermometers were shoved under my tongue.)
The elf’s brows lifted after a moment passed without a reply to her question. I slapped a smile on my face to stop from gaping at her and shrugged helplessly.
“It looks that way.” I gestured at my still-steaming engine. “I think it’s overheated.”
The engine in question coughed up a cloud of acrid black smoke. It smelled a bit like burning hair — sour and stale.
“Youthink?” The girl’s nose wrinkled. “It’s not going to explode, is it?”
“God, I hope not,” I murmured.
“What?”
“I said no, of course not.”
“Oh.”
We both stared at the engine. It gave an ominous rattle that shook the whole frame and, despite my assurances that it was not about to self-destruct like a set piece in an action movie, I scurried back to stand beside the elf on the sidewalk.
“Maybe we should stand farther away while we wait,” she suggested after a moment. “Under that tree.”
I glanced over at her. “Whilewewait?”
“I mean… yeah. You’re all by yourself, right?”
After a beat of hesitation, I mumbled a soft, “Right…”
“Then I’m waiting with you,” she informed me firmly as her eyes darted down the road. “This isn’t the best area to hang around in alone after dark.”
Great.
Just what I needed to hear.
I looked around properly for the first time and immediately understood what she meant. We were on the outskirts of town, in a semi-industrial area that had either seen better days or not yet succumbed to the sprawl of urban redevelopment. One lone bar appeared to be open a few blocks down, but the rest was mix of strip malls, the occasional fast food drive-through, and vacant businesses with FOR LEASE signs in their boarded-up windows. It wasn’t late, but the sun was already setting — this time of year, it was mostly dark by mid-afternoon — and the whole stretch looked rather forlorn in the gathering shadows.
“I’ll be fine,” I assured the elf. “I’ll just have to call a towing company. No big deal.”
Except itwasa big deal. Even as I said it, I was doing mental calculations about the cost of said tow in relation to the dwindling wad of money I had in the shoebox shoved beneath my passenger seat. At my last waitressing gig, I’d barely made enough to cover gas, snacks, my cellphone bill, and the fleabag pay-by-month motel I’d called home. What little remained of my small nest egg from Atlantic City was pretty much used up by the time I crossed the Massachusetts border that morning. If I had more than a thousand bucks to my name, I’d be stunned.
Maybe the elf-girl read the growing panic on my face, because she reached toward me, as if to clasp me on the arm. Instantly, I stepped backward out of range. I didn’t want to offend her, but…
People didn’t touch me.
Not unless I was prepared for it.
“Sorry, I…” My words trailed off. I didn’t know how to explain.