American Elsewhere - By Robert Jackson Bennett Page 0,29

too easy.”

But Parson has glanced at his board of checkers again and spied some brilliant move hidden among the pattern of marbles. With an impatient wave he returns to the game and the unoccupied seat across from him, and does not notice when Mona leaves.

As Mona drives across Wink all the sprinklers start to come on, not instantly, but in a slow, graceful procession, like water jets in a huge fountain, starting at the corner of one block and moving down to the next. In the morning light the streams of water take on a white glow, and when they begin waving back and forth, each one a little more delayed than the last, Mona feels like she’s watching a synchronized-swimming performance. It isn’t until she’s near the end of the block that she realizes the idea of watering a lawn here is strange: they’re in the high desert mountains, with barren scrub less than half a mile away. It feels impossible that she should find so many soft, verdant lawns lining the streets, and Mona glances up at the mountains and the mesa to confirm they’re still there.

All around her the town is coming to life. An old woman wobbles out on her porch with a watering can to fuss with a splendid bougainvillea that appears to need no attention at all. Fathers climb into their sedans and trucks and—rarely—their luxury cars and slowly cruise out onto the cement streets. Eventually Mona realizes she does not think of them as just men: they are all fathers, they have to be, for why else would they wear such bland but imposing suits and plaid shirts, and choose such stolid, unassuming hairstyles? For God’s sake, one of them is even smoking a pipe.

On one street a clutch of aproned mothers herd their children out onto their driveways and into cars, each child swinging a tiny tin lunchbox. Mona slows a little as she passes them. Though she wants to ignore it, the perfection of the scene is powerfully striking.

No, she thinks. Not today. I won’t go there today.

She speeds up.

She passes the diner, whose enormous, curving neon sign says CHLOE’S. It’s evidently a hot spot, with parking spaces rapidly disappearing even as Mona watches. But what she finds most curious about it is what is happening in the back alley. She slows again to watch: there are two women there, each in pale pink waitress uniforms with their hair up and little white caps nestled in the exact center. One is much older and more mature, holding herself with the posture of a confident, seasoned veteran. She stands to the side and watches the other, a girl not even out of her teens. The girl is walking down the alley in a measured stride with a waiting tray balanced in one hand. The veteran watches keenly and barks out an order, and the girl makes an abrupt turn and paces from one side of the alley to the other. On the tray, Mona sees, are five pie pans, but they do not contain pies, but marbles. One pan shifts a little bit—just a centimeter to the left or so—and the marbles clatter around in the pan. The girl blanches but recovers, ferrying the tray of marbles back across the alley with a grim face and more care than a surgeon. Practice, Mona thinks, and she smiles as she passes them.

Mona has not yet considered living here in Wink. She’s inherited a house but not a life, and she has determinedly avoided having a life for several years, choosing instead barren roads and empty motel rooms. Yet now, somewhere in one of the closets in the back of her mind, she imagines what it would be like to live in this tiny town, where carrying pies is a serious, studied art and the sprinklers put on a balletic performance every morning.

She warms to the idea. The world has been so big to her for the past years that it is very inviting to imagine it so small.

No wonder her mother was happy here. Though the town is odd, it seems it would be difficult to be unhappy here. It is like a place Mona dreamed about once, but she can’t remember when or what exactly she dreamed about. There is something to these clean streets and swaying pines that sends a stir of echoes fluttering up in her mind.

Her tour of the town is not entirely peaceful, she notices. Everywhere she goes,