Meg Pearson was almost magazine pretty, tall with auburn hair and green eyes. At first glance men would respond to her as if seeing something very rare. Like living in Jersey City and walking to the parking lot to find a Bald Eagle perched on the hood of your car. For some men she met along the way this utter enchantment would extend well into their bank accounts before they came to. The last one was not like that. She met him at a hotel bar off Interstate 40. Past the third exit into Memphis. She had just quit her waitress job in Charlotte the week before and was hiding out at her mother's house. She wasn't especially welcome there, not since birth. But as long as she came home very late and left very early, everything was manageable. He didn't even look her way the whole night. He looked nice enough and bought enough to perk her interest. She was in a rare state of semi-reflection that night. She imagined, for just a moment, what it would be like to be sane. To be normal and maybe even be loved. He seemed so nice. His timing was perfect when he asked if he could just sit with her. He didn't offer to buy a drink or even compliment Meg. He just sat, pleasantly and patiently. Then she talked to him. They would go into the restaurant together and get coffee. For Meg in this moment, this was like being swept off to Paris. They closed the restaurant together and walked about the hotel courtyard until they settled in at a round plastic table near the empty pool. It was a clear night full of stars and the sounds of passing cars and crickets mingling together. He was funny and attentive and seemed to her to be educated, though his work didn't require it. In fact, his whole life story wasn't very adventurous or exciting. He seemed so at ease with his life, though. She knew what that looked like because she had never seen or experienced it before. He walked her to her room door and said good night. She peeked back out of her room to watch him leave. The next morning she woke early with something new stirring inside her, something like hope. She showered, dressed quickly and looked for her things. She didn't have anything. Everything was at home but she didn't want to go home. She resolved to leave everything if he would take her with him.
Meg was waiting for him on the hood of his car. She waited past day break until he finally came out of his room. She took in every movement he made, coming out, closing the door behind him, turning to step onto the parking lot, walking towards her. His face looking pleasantly surprised. She had somewhat expected him to look horrified. He didn't. She had nothing to lose and she told her self so, again.
"Hi, Meg." he said as he passed her to put his bags in his trunk.
"Hi."
"You sleep good?" He asked.
"Yeah. No."
"Me either," he said as he moved in close to her, "I was wondering if you would like to go to Little Rock with me. I got a job there."
She leaped off the hood of the car and onto him. Leaving the motel, Meg was sitting in the middle of the front seat and kissing on him about every ten seconds. And he seemed so happy with her. She was on her honeymoon, in her state of mind, and on her way to Little Rock. Her man had a job waiting there. They would arrive in Little Rock late that night. The plan was for her to look for an apartment for them while he was at his job interview. That next day she found three apartments and brought the marketing pamphlets back to the hotel. She was mostly just excited about their choosing one together. That was the last place she saw him, when he was leaving in the morning for a job interview in Little Rock, Arkansas.
Her grief was unbearable, her pride destroyed. Meg decided to get back on the hi-way and just keep going. It wasn't so much a decision as it was that it was simply the nearest route of escaping from herself that she could see. The motel was on I-40 and next to a used car lot. She had enough money to buy a two hundred dollar car and some gas. The previous owner was nice enough to throw in four milk jugs filled with water and a case of oil. He wouldn't need them anymore, he said, but she would. The remaining money ran through her gas tank and ran out thirty miles outside Oklahoma City. Willow Springs.
Ted called Meg the day he knew he was going to run for mayor. She put out as much interest as she could. The whole affair for her had passed from necessary to boring and into painful. Her agreement with this Rusty guy was to just to spend some time, time to time, as he put it. But she had no idea how Ted would be, how needy. Whatever it was for, she knew it was suppose to have ended a full month ago. But the Frank Howard guy kept sending her more money and she kept taking it. She was actually starting to know people now. Half the apartment complex knew her. Many in town knew her from the restaurant and she went to lunch with coworkers more and more. This never happened in Charlotte and it actually made Willow Springs into a more interesting place for her. It was a nice place, she thought. And to leave it suddenly, the way she was left in Little Rock was going to fix everything.
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