Full dark,no stars

The last act was Autograph Time, during which she dutifully fulfilled requests to inscribe happy birthday wishes, happy anniversary wishes, To Janet, a fan of all my books, and To Leah-Hope to see you at Lake Toxaway again this summer! (a slightly odd request, since Tess had never been there, but presumably the autograph-seeker had).

When all the books had been signed and the last few lingerers had been satisfied with more cell-phone pictures, Ramona Norville escorted Tess into her office for a cup of real coffee. Ms. Norville took hers black, which didn’t surprise Tess at all. Her hostess was a black-coffee type of chick if one had ever strode the surface of the earth (probably in Doc Martens on her day off). The only surprising thing in the office was the framed signed picture on the wall. The face was familiar, and after a moment, Tess was able to retrieve the name from the junkheap of memory that is every writer’s most valuable asset.

“Richard Widmark?”

Ms. Norville laughed in an embarrassed but pleased sort of way. “My favorite actor. Had sort of a crush on him when I was a girl, if you want the whole truth. I got him to sign that for me ten years before he died. He was very old, even then, but it’s a real signature, not a stamp. This is yours.” For one crazed moment, Tess thought Ms. Norville meant the signed photo. Then she saw the envelope in those blunt fingers. The kind of envelope with a window, so you could peek at the check inside.

“Thank you,” Tess said, taking it.

“No thanks necessary. You earned every penny.”

Tess did not demur.

“Now. About that shortcut.”

Tess leaned forward attentively. In one of the Knitting Society books, Doreen Marquis had said, The two best things in life are warm croissants and a quick way home. This was a case of the writer using her own dearly held beliefs to enliven her fiction.

“Can you program intersections in your GPS?”

“Yes, Tom’s very canny.”

Ms. Norville smiled. “Input Stagg Road and US 47, then. Stagg Road is very little used in this modern age-almost forgotten since that damn 84-but it’s scenic. You’ll ramble along it for, oh, sixteen miles or so. Patched asphalt, but not too bumpy, or wasn’t the last time I took it, and that was in the spring, when the worst bumps show up. At least that’s my experience.”

“Mine, too,” Tess said.

“When you get to 47, you’ll see a sign pointing you to I-84, but you’ll only need to take the turnpike for twelve miles or so, that’s the beauty part. And you’ll save tons of time and aggravation.”

“That’s also the beauty part,” Tess said, and they laughed together, two women of the same mind watched over by a smiling Richard Widmark. The abandoned store with the ticking sign was then still ninety minutes away, tucked snugly into the future like a snake in its hole. And the culvert, of course. – 5 -

Tess not only had a GPS; she had spent extra for a customized one. She liked toys. After she had input the intersection (Ramona Norville leaned in the window as she did it, watching with manly interest), the gadget thought for a moment or two, then said, “Tess, I am calculating your route.”

“Whoa-ho, how about that!” Norville said, and laughed the way that people do at some amiable peculiarity.

Tess smiled, although she privately thought programming your GPS to call you by name was no more peculiar than keeping a fan foto of a dead actor on your office wall. “Thank you for everything, Ramona. It was all very professional.”

“We do our best at Three Bs. Now off you go. With my thanks.”

“Off I go,” Tess agreed. “And you’re very welcome. I enjoyed it.” This was true; she usually did enjoy such occasions, in an all-right-let’s-get-this-taken-care-of fashion. And her retirement fund would certainly enjoy the unexpected infusion of cash.

“Have a safe trip home,” Norville said, and Tess gave her a thumbs-up.

When she pulled away, the GPS said, “Hello, Tess. I see we’re taking a trip.”

“Yes indeed,” she said. “And a good day for it, wouldn’t you say?”

Unlike the computers in science fiction movies, Tom was poorly equipped for light conversation, although Tess sometimes helped him. He told her to make a right turn four hundred yards ahead, then take her first left. The map on the Tomtom’s screen displayed green arrows and street names, sucking the information down from some whirling metal ball of technology high above.

She was soon on the outskirts of Chicopee, but Tom sent her past the turn for I-84 without comment and into countryside that was flaming with October color and smoky with the scent of burning leaves. After ten miles or so on something called Old County Road, and just as she was wondering if her GPS had made a mistake (as if), Tom spoke up again.

“In one mile, right turn.”