“Oh,” she said, gesturing somewhere up the hill, “the neighbors. You won’t see them. You won’t see anyone if you don’t want to.”
The following days were some of the more productive of my life. I found in California what I had been looking for in New Hampshire. I wrote for hours, losing track of time. I wrote lying in bed and standing in the kitchen. I wrote outside, holding my pages in place with a steel camping mug, the magic hour light dancing on the rim. Every morning, I walked down to the river to watch the mist rise. This was a walk that made me earn its more idyllic sections by forcing me down a half mile of shoulder-free interstate with blind corners. Truck drivers mistook me for a meth head on a predawn stumble. Their tires spun gravel in my face as they offered colorful epithets from their open windows. I smiled and waved. Nothing could upset me.
Beneath the bridge that stretched over the river, someone had spray-painted: IF IT IS RIGHT, IT HAPPENS. THE MAIN THING IS NOT TO HURRY. NOTHING GOOD GETS AWAY. —JOHN STEINBECK. I stood with my hands on my hips, inhaling through my nostrils, letting the words sink in—though I was not so far gone to California that I didn’t imagine how frustrating it would be to run through an airport with John Steinbeck.
* * *
Margeaux called the day before she was supposed to return. Until that moment, I had been only partially aware of a landline. It took me a second to locate the source of the ringing because it was buried under a Mexican blanket.
“Hi,” she began, “we have a small problem.”
I looked out the window. I may have gotten hose-happy on the plants. But how would she know?
Apparently, Margeaux’s great-uncle had a heart attack during the wedding and was taken to the hospital, where he died by the time the reception was over. Margeaux and her great-uncle were as close as that particular relationship generally dictates, but since she was already down there, she felt obliged to stay a few extra days.
“Of course,” I said. “Don’t give it another thought.”
I told her I was happy to live in her house a little longer, which I was. She thanked me and launched into the play-by-play of the wedding. I tried to listen, but as she spoke, I caught the refrigerator out of the corner of my eye. As much as solitude had helped my writing habits, it had terrorized my eating ones. I had not not been plowing through cereal as if being dared. I had not not eaten five slices of avocado toast on my first day. Last night’s dinner was a can of chili garnished with Tostito shards. But I am a grown woman, I thought. I can figure out how to feed myself.
After we hung up, I approached the refrigerator. When I could stand the suspense no longer, I whipped open the door. There were bottles of salad dressing and spreads kept flush by a bar, as if on a condiment roller coaster. There were a couple of eggs, a browning head of lettuce, and something that could no longer reasonably call itself yogurt.
“Crap,” I muttered.
Things in the pantry weren’t looking much better. I went out to the garden to see if the plants could return the favor. Alas, there was nothing in bloom. I started calculating. I figured I could last about two days before I started stripping bark from the trees and licking it. Margeaux would be home in four. I stood on the porch and leaned on the railing. This was ludicrous. The not-kidnapped among us rarely starve within the walls of an actual house. But twenty miles of twisting trucker-trafficked road stood between me and the closest grocery store.
I tried to distract myself through writing. I knew I could never be one of those people who forgets to eat, but there was always the chance I could be one of those artists who forgets to eat. But it wasn’t long before I found myself idly moving my arrow over the little slice of sonar on the corner of my screen. KindBud420. Where exactly was he or she? Or them. A family of KindBuds, maybe. KinderBudens if they were German. Dear God, they could have streusel.
I closed my laptop and catalogued the contents of Margeaux’s pantry: baking soda, sugar, flour. There were two eggs in the back of the fridge. Was I willing to part with two precious eggs to make a cake for strangers? What an Anne Frank–ish dilemma. Minor as far as Anne Frank–ish dilemmas go, but still. Also, I didn’t have any oil. Maybe I could just use water. This was a bad plan. Was I really going to go banging down a stranger’s door in an area where most people displayed multiple BEWARE OF DOG signs?
My stomach growled.
I cracked the eggs into a bowl and poured in what was left of the whiskey.
* * *
Walking through the woods, I felt like a nosy housewife with a casserole. Or like Little Red Riding Hood without the hood, the basket, or the blind confidence. I zigzagged along, holding my cell phone in the air, hoping for a signal. The phone and I registered the house at the same time.
There was a tall wooden fence that circled KindBud420’s property. From the fence dangled dozens of mercifully noiseless wind chimes, muted by the angle from which they hung. A row of terra-cotta frogs glared up at me from the dirt, their mouths agape. I knocked. Nothing. A rusted truck was parked on the lawn. On the passenger seat was the seldom-seen dual subscription to Maxim and Mother Jones. I knocked again, harder this time. The air exploded with the sound of dogs barking. A male figure yelled at them.
“Hello?” I suggested.
“Who is it?” the voice asked.
I could see his eyes moving back and forth through the slots in the fence. It looked like he was
