Excellent short story People We Once Knew : Artemis by estory

Jessica lived in Tucker Lake, New Hampshire, up in the woods, high on the mountains, along the shores of the lakes and in the snow covered valleys. Her mother had been a somewhat confused ex-hippie who had never really married her father, and he had left for California before Jessica could form any memories of him. Her mother used to tell her, rather disdainfully, that he had something to do with selling microprocessors and that he lived somewhere in Silicon Valley. He never sent a dime of child support back, never wrote, never sent any pictures. If he had, Jessica probably would have used them as dart boards. Her mother, on the other hand, was somehow drawn into eastern religions and practiced yoga as a form of self improvement. Instead of pictures of Jesus, there were statues of fat, laughing Buddhas around the rooms of her apartment. She believed in tuning out the parts of the world that created anger and discomfort for her, and sometimes that included Jessica too. There were many days when Jessica came home from school to the apartment her mother rented from one of her aunts and finding it overwhelmed with the scent of incense so strong she had to go back outside. She didn't know it, but in many ways she really had more in common with her father than her mother. While her mother was content to work as a cashier in a grocery store, sit around in her parents' old furniture, and listen to tapes of the The Who and the Yardbirds dressed in tie dyed t-shirts and sneakers, driving around in an old Volkswagen bug, Jessica was on the look out for something better. The life she had with her mother at the apartment gave her no real connections to the family she had been born into. Her mother knew nothing of the family recipes in the cookbook of her grandmother, and Jessica was fed a steady, mundane diet of cans of ravioli, macaroni and cheese, sloppy joes and Kellog's cereals, with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches thrown in her paper bag for lunch. At the holidays, her mother would plug in an artificial Christmas tree a week before Christmas Eve and buy a bottle of Jim Beam and spend the night watching cartoons on TV. At Easter, she would bring home a bag of outdated jelly beans for Jessica and sit on the porch in a yoga pose, lighting up a joint in celebration. It was the same for the Fourth of July and Halloween. Often Jessica spent such times walking around the neighborhood by herself, looking into the windows of the houses at a life she could scarcely have imagined. She went through elementary school and high school and after that she got a job at the Windy Hill Resort at the mountain on the other side of the lake. It was a small town, she felt she had reached her limits in it, the end of her leash, so to speak. There wasn't much to do in Tucker Lake, and there weren't many people to meet either. In fact, everybody knew everybody else, said hello to each other once a week in the grocery store, and by the time they had finished high school, everyone had bowled with everyone else, everyone had gotten drunk together at least once, and everyone had gone skiing together. The winters were long and snowy, and life there revolved around skiing. The Windy Hill Resort was one of the bigger resorts in the White Mountains; it was in a beautiful spot, right on the lake, in a tight notch between steep mountain ridges that rose up to the ski slopes. In the summer, they rented out canoes and rowboats, they maintained a few hiking and biking trails that led up to the summit of Tucker Mountain, they had an indoor pool with a Jacuzzi and sauna, and they had the only five star restaurant in the county, complete with a cocktail lounge and everything. In the winter, they operated the ski lifts and the chalet at the top of the mountain. In the summer, parents from Boston would drive up with their kids to spend a couple of weeks in the wild country, and in the fall, they got bus loads of leaf peepers, mostly senior citizens, armed with their cameras. So there was a transient air about the place, with strangers always coming and going, people who you could never really latch onto as they travelled away into the wide world. Jessica started at the resort after she graduated high school. At first, she waited on tables and quickly learned the time honored art of hustling the patrons for tips. The older girls taught her how to ask people where they were from, and then telling them that she had an aunt there, she had spent the summers there while on vacation as a kid. They taught her the knack of asking them what they planned on doing in Tucker Lake and then telling them she had skied the mountain, she had gone canoeing in the lake so many times, she loved it; you could get some lovely pictures if you went to the little brook on the far side. She learned to wear low cut blouses and lean over the table next to the men, and she would tell the wives that whatever they were wearing, they looked so beautiful. Of course, she really could care less about these transient tourists; they were just a means to an end. Jessica was stashing her cash, as much of it as she could, in a shoe box she hid in the back of a closet in the basement of her apartment. So was Marlene. Marlene was one of the other waitresses, another lost soul stuck in the dead end of Tucker Lake, who longed for adventure and escape. The long nights and endless weeks of waiting on the tables of demanding strangers really was a monotony, and as the months dragged on, through the short summers and the brief, dazzling autumns, and the long winters, the endless parade of bus loads and car loads of guests began to wear on their sense of accomplishment. After work, they indulged themselves in the only real release they had available: getting drunk back at Marlene's apartment with a couple of waiters from the resort. Sometimes they would hang out at the diner, or bowl down at the alley in town, and sometimes they would make out in the back seat of one of their cars, but it was just a form of diversion in the end. Jessica knew none of these guys would be able or willing to take her out of Tucker Lake. She had made up her mind that she didn't want to spend the rest of her life listening to the ancient, endlessly repeating cabaret music in the lounge, while old timers from all over the country danced their last waltzes in the pathetic gloom. The resort had all sorts of oldies bands and cabaret acts and comedians that provided entertainment in the lounge, playing their awkward and somewhat stale versions of old Barry Manilow numbers and Neill Diamond hits. Jessica and Marlene and the other waiters and waitresses would watch the senior citizens and their spouses recreating jitterbugs and sock hops, in somewhat halting steps, from fading memories out on the dance floor. On disco nights, they'd see the parents hustle and gyrate while their kids stared at them from the tables as if they didn't want to be recognized as being their children. Sometimes they couldn't help laughing. Sometimes Jessica would grow somber and thoughtful, especially when she was alone. It seemed to her that she was watching the revelation of her future, and she wondered what she would be like at their age. The thought of ending up stuck here, listening to Barry Manilow after staring at the leaves all day, mortified her. She had seen enough of the leaves too. What was really forming at the bottom of her mind was trying to figure out a short cut to get out of Tucker Lake, and keep going, for as long and far as possible. One night, the girl who served as the bartender in the cocktail lounge called in sick, and when they asked her, Jessica jumped at the chance to fill in. She knew how much money you could make in tips up there, and after all, she liked making money and didn't mind shaking up drinks and making small talk to get it. She was an immediate hit, especially with the men. She made them stiff drinks, she looked great in her tight jeans and low cut blouses, and she had the knack to make them feel that she just might have once been interested in them. It wasn't long before she had the regular spot. Jessica would gently push her frail patrons into oblivion, one drink at a time, and pick up the money they lost track of afterwards, while Marlene would work her parties for as much tips as she could. Together they counted it up and folded it away. After the place closed, they would sit at one of the tables, make themselves a couple of scotch and sodas, and give air to their dreams. Those nights, in the dim quietness of the lounge, when the shapes of the trees outside the big, picture windows seemed more like spirits than anything else, and the empty tables and chairs looked like dancers frozen in an endless waltz, were some of the happiest moments in Jessica's life. She and Marlene would talk about singing together, and travelling the country playing in all kinds of bars and resorts and casinos; maybe they could make it to Vail or Lake Tahoe or someplace exotic like that. They would catch the roving eyes of some rich playboys, maybe pro football players or actors, and they would drive off in their convertibles to LA or Palm Springs. They would shop the fashion stores along Sunset Boulevard. They might get into a rock video. Maybe someone from Tucker Lake would see them on TV someday. That would be something. "Do you think some of the people who come up here have real money?" Jessica asked Marlene one night, while they were sipping their drinks in the darkened lounge. "What do you mean by 'real money'?" Marlene asked. "You know, like they're a millionaire, or something." "I don't know," Marlene shrugged, "maybe. Some of them look like they have real money. They act like it, sometimes." "Wouldn't it be something, to find a millionaire's credit card, or a bank roll, under one of the tables?" Marlene laughed. "You don't just find millionaire's credit cards under tables. You've got to come up with something better than that." Jessica was looking at the shapes in the night on the other side of the window. She thought she could see a woman in a toga with a bow and arrow, carefully stepping between the trees, stalking something. "It would be great though," she demurred, "It would be our ticket out of here. We could go wherever we wanted. We could go to California." "And then what?" Marlene said, looking at her friend. "Then we could change our names. We could hire a talent agent. We could do an act." "What name would you pick?" Marlene asked her, curious.' "I'd be Windy. Like the girl in the song. Windy Day. Who would you be?" Marlene shook her head. "I don't know. Maybe I'd be Brenda Starr, I guess." She didn't tell Marlene, but Jessica was beginning to keep an eye out. As the nights wore on and the crowds of tourists changed from evening to evening, she began to think of the men who crept up to her bar in much the same way as a panther thinks of a deer creeping up to a pond for a drink. Some of them seemed to know, to sense that there was something crouched under the shrubbery nearby, ready to pounce on them. They definitely had their ears pricked up and their eyes peeled. The slightest snap of a twig or a crunch of a leaf, would set them bounding off, drinks in hand, for their wives sitting at the tables around the dance floor. But she was just as sure that the law of nature would work out for her, that her patience would be rewarded, that one of them would not be so careful, would let their guard down for just that one instance she needed. Her chance. One night in the fall she was working the bar in her little black dress, shaking up drinks for a bus load of middle aged leaf peepers when a man with short, grey hair, in a snappy, sports jacket, sat at the end of the bar and smiled at her. He was alone. She smiled back. She asked him what he wanted and he ordered a scotch and soda. Unlike the others, who took their drinks back over to their wives and girlfriends waiting at the tables, he stayed on his stool, lingering, carefully sipping his drink and stealing glances at her while her back was turned. He didn't know it, but she could see him in the mirror behind the bar. She had lots of practice. She moved over next to him and asked him whether he liked the music. "It's a little slow for me," he said, "What do you think?" "Oh, I'll listen to anything," she said, "We don't get many big acts up here." The man leaned forward. "Do you like it up here?" "It's alright," she said, "if you like the peace and quiet. Sometimes I get tired of it. Where are you from?" "California," he said, with a smile, "From LA." "I've always wanted to go to LA," she said, sighing. "So what's keeping you?" She shrugged. "No time, no money." The man gave her a long, wistful look and took out a bill and laid on the bar. He ordered another drink. "Well, it's like anyplace really," he mused, "Anyplace can get boring, depending on whether you have someone to share it with." "Do you have someone to share it with?" she asked him, as she poured his drink. He shook his head. "Haven't been that lucky." He looked at her rather intently, studying her face, looking into her eyes. "What I wouldn't give to have someone like you out there." She laughed, watching him take his drink with a flourish of his hand. "And why is that?" she asked him. "Because you're beautiful. You'd make a good model." She stuck a hand on her hip and ran her fingers through her hair. "Do you think so?" she asked, with a smile. He finished his drink and smiled at her. "Oh I know. I'm a photographer. That's what brings me up here." She took his glass and casually poured him another one. "You came to take pictures of me?" she asked coily. He laughed. "I do fall foliage. The leaves and the little white churches, the covered bridges. Things like that." "We have plenty of that up here," she said, sounding bored. She watched him open his wallet again for some more bills. She listened to him as he described the pictures he had taken of Yosemite Falls and the Mission San Luis Rey. As he told her about catching the right light, and how he hiked off the beaten track to get the perfect perspectives, drinking up the glasses she pushed under him one after the other, he seemed to fancy himself a prospect for her. He told her about his apartment in Hollywood, his sports car, and his trips to Canada and Hawaii, how much more fun it would have been if she had been with him. He told about the beaches, the palm trees, the pools and the shopping malls, as if he could lay them all at her feet, if only she would come back to LA with him. Out beyond them, the show was over, the band was packing up, and the elderly dancers were gathering their things and heading back up to their rooms. "I'd love to come out to LA someday," she told him, as he staggered to his feet and slipped his arms, awkwardly, into his rumpled jacket. "I'll give you my number," he said, and he wrote it down, in a shaky hand, on a scrap of paper she gave him. "Call me." "Sounds good," Jessica said, smiling at him. She watched him, with a pounding heart, as he ambled off out of the lounge and down the corridor. There, on the bar where it had fallen out of his wallet as he shuffled around his bills, was his debit card. It was laying right in front of her. She picked it up quickly and put it in her pocket. Then, she turned out the lights and turned her back on the lounge. She felt the weight about her feet, her rusty ties to Tucker Lake, breaking and falling away. The darkness seemed to lift into the stars over her head as she left the resort and started her car. The first thing she did was call Marlene. She told her to meet her over at her place, and bring some clothes. "What's going on?" Marlene mumbled into the phone. "We're hitting the road, babe," Jessica told her. "I've got our ticket out of here. Just get your things, and I'll pick you up at your place in five minutes. We don't have much time. We've got to make tracks and get out of here." "Where are we going?" Marlene asked. "West," Jessica said, "We're going west. Vegas, Vail, LA. All the places we've been dreaming about." Even though the headlights were on, Jessica couldn't really see where she was going, or how she was going to get there. Author Notes This is a story of lost souls, of people living without connections and foundations and purpose, latching onto some pipe dream and finding a way to achieve it. It's a story of people coming from the middle of nowhere and going nowhere, looking out for themselves, following their instincts as they go along. It's really the story of many young people, nowadays. I was influenced much by Carver, Cheever and Joyce in some of the construction of this, as well as elements of the style. The idea came from a trip I once took to the White Mountains, and a night I once spent in a resort there. I found myself wondering what kind of lives the staff lived, what kind of places did they come from, and what kind of dreams did they have. I wanted it to come across as a conversation of someone we all may have once knew. estory

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