Editor
Next...
Nick’s cabin was a ways up the mountain from Alonzaville, a settlement of fewer than a half dozen homes.
It had snowed a few times so far that year, but nothing that stayed.
He had not been there before, and his imagined landscapes and settings gave way to what he saw as he had driven the back roads and up the foothills.
It was a simple place, a rough vacation cabin of maybe five or ten acres up where the view of the Massanutten Mountain across The Valley to the east was magnificent. The George Washington National Forest covered a range of peaks on both ridges that bracketed the Valley.
Many recommended the views from the Skyline Dive running along the spine of the Blue Ridge, but he never had time.
In the distance below, from right to left, the smaller North Fork River meandered its unhurried way toward a junction with South River at Front Royal. Somewhere down there a railroad grade paralleled the river, and a good highway running northeast and southwest between Staunton and Winchester before slipping northward into West Virginia near Westminster.
The air was fresh and cold as he took a deep breath, and scanned the valley below.
He could almost see Staunton mid valley to the south, and across at the foot of that eastern ridge, Waynesboro with its road leading up that distant mountain through Rockfish Gap and into another hazy valley beyond.
He would glance down at the topographic map, and back up into the distance, trying to correlate landmarks with the folded booklet in his hand. The cell phone might have provided the same information but its screen was impossible to see in bright sun, and annoying to scroll when he needed a broader view.
It had been a while since he had flown solo from Leesburg, and he had been terrified nearly losing his way in the lowering cloud cover en route to Charlottesville in that far valley. These years later, he still had vivid recollection of the aerial landscape up and down the next valley.
When emotion, especially terror, accompanied any experience, he remembered details that became permanently etched in recollection. It was as if the ability to learn and immediately apply was suddenly thrown open by the character of the circumstance.
* * *
He was straightening things up in the modest kitchen at Nick’s when he heard a tentative knocking at the window in the crude front door. There was an indeterminate silhouette of someone peering in, shadowed by light beyond.
She was taller than he remembered, and he saw her handbag as he opened the door.
Behind her, down the rough trail leading to the cabin, the car parked next to his, was newer, and a flashier model.
He glanced beyond, then caught himself just a little taken aback, and invited her in.
“…oh, sorry. It’s just that…”
“The car?”
“Yes: it looks new…I don’t have much experience with new cars…”
* * *
By the time he returned from the kitchen, she had made herself comfortable on Nick’s sofa.
With two wineglasses by their stems in a closed fist, and a bottle in the other hand, he set the glassware on the table between them.
“Wine?”
“Sure,” she said tossing back her hair, and securing it in place with the bows of sunglasses.
“Don’t you think it risky to come all the way out here. You don’t know me that well…”
She eyed him across the lip of her wine glass and took a tentative sip.
It made him nervous that she didn’t have a pat answer for him, then brightened up as she placed the glass down on the table, pursing her lips as if considering something.
“Like it?”
“Why, yes I do.”
”It’s an…”
“Albariño,” she interjected, and he laughed.
“...the label on the bottle…?”
Then he realized the label was facing him across the table and that she could not have read it.
‘Well?” he began.
She leaned over to a large handbag next to her and pulled out a stack of papers.
“…your prose is gorgeous…” she began. “…but…”
It was the sort of thing he always heard.
“Plot?”
“Exactly,” she said getting right to the point. “I have no interest in micromanaging descriptions or dialogue. In fact, what you have written is completely natural…”
He was waiting: it was always a compliment, then a but: from prior experience, he knew the but would focus on a certain incoherence of plot.
She was certainly all business, and after an hour or two, he still knew relatively little about her.
***