esperanza

Francine

Francine came out of the restroom. "She'll be okay. Washing her face." She smiled as she passed me. "Your daughter?" The question meant something to Francine as nonsensical as it seemed to me.

"Just a hungry kid. Climbed in my vehicle. I was stopped on the freeway."

Francine and I just looked at each other for a moment. "Your burgers are up," she said finally and went to get them.

I had already started eating my burger when Kelly emerged from the restroom, She paused there, looking shocked, pale and disturbed, as if something had been made clear to her that she found intolerable.

The phone next to the bathroom door seemed to be the focus of her attention. She dialed a number and spoke into the receiver for a moment. I couldn't help but notice that she didn't use any coins, she must have been making a collect call.

After hanging up, she wiped away a tear that had formed in the corner of her eye. I waved at her, and she slowly made her way back to our booth. "No luck?" I asked.

She shook her head.

"Who were you calling?" I asked casually, trying not to make it sound important. If I pressured her, she might lie again.

Tears leaked down her cheeks as she replied, "Family." She began to eat again, more slowly this time, savoring the soup and sipping her soda.

I considered my options. I had to do something, even if it meant turning her over to the police. That might be the best choice for me, but it could backfire if she made any allegations. Thinking about the potential consequences, I felt a heavy weight in my stomach.

I put the worries aside. She was a hungry kid and she needed someone to be friendly. "So you called your family in L.A.?" I asked.

She nodded. "I'm so hungry and when I eat I feel sick," she complained.

"One bite at a time," I advised. "Take a sip of Coke, eat some of the bread on your sandwich." I watched her eat for a while. She turned down the offer of any fries but the food she did eat seemed to want to stay down. I ate all my burger and reflected on the waste of it all.

Francine appeared. "Dessert?"

I shook my head. "Can you box up the burger? Maybe she can eat it later."

"Sure." She grinned at the girl.

Kelly looked grateful until Francine produced a brush and comb from some pocket. "Use these, hon. Your hair is a mess."

We both looked at her until she took the stuff and headed back toward the bathrooms. She hesitated a moment before choosing the women's room again. I grinned. "Doesn't have her glasses."

Francine dropped the check and sighed. "You want me to call the cops for you before she gets out of there?"

"No." I shook my head. "She's got folks in L.A. I'll take her there. Watch, she'll try to call them when she gets out of the bathroom, they didn't answer last time." I took a business card out of my wallet and handed it to her.

My name, Walter S. Dalton, my company name, address, phone number, et cetera. She read it, looked at me and I could tell the moment she decided to trust me to do the right thing.

Kelly came out, her hair neatly brushed and combed away from her face, creating a soft, dark cloud with lighter streaks that beautifully framed her classic oval-shaped features. As I contemplated what it might be like to be the father of a daughter her age, I couldn't help but notice how much cuter she now looked.

She went to the phone again. She tried to be quiet but I caught a lot of
what she said. She asked for a collect call to "Margaret Kelly" then she said, "I know something about George," when the person came on the line. I didn't hear the rest.

She was crying again when she joined me.  "I'm ok," she murmured as she slid back into the booth.

She again busied herself with the soup for awhile. Finally, she looked up and regarded me carefully. "Are you married?" she asked.

I shook my head. "Tried it, didn't work out." No need to explain.

"Where do you live?"

"Burbank."

"Can I stay with you a few days?  I mean...." She swallowed hard, her eyes wide, her lips trembling.

I must have blinked but it felt like I just stared at her. "Folks turn you down on coming back?"

"Something like that."

A sad little answer. I hesitated to tell her no, she seemed likely to break into a million pieces. Cry at the very least. But how could I say yes?

I changed tactics. "Who's George?"

She wobbled as if the world had moved underneath her, then she took a deep breath to tell another lie. "Someone I used to know." She didn't ask me how I knew about George.

"What happened to him?"

"He's dead. I think." Not lying, the answer was too quick. This girl didn't lie that quickly, unless maybe she had been ready for the question.

"You think? You don't know?"

"He must be dead. Head on collision last night. I-5 south of Fresno."

I'd actually heard about that accident on a traffic report, three fatalities and one of them a name that rang a bell now. "George Kelly?" I said.

"Yes?" she answered.

"The man who died was George Kelly, I heard it on the radio. Sports writer in L.A."

"You didn't know him." She was telling not asking.

"I read his column."

She smiled.

"Did you see the accident?"

"Oh, yeah." The ghost of it passed across her face wiping away the smile.

"From the truck?"

"Uh, yes." She seemed to have no concept of what she looked or sounded like when she was lying.

"That why you wanted the trucker to stop?" I asked casually.

She nodded bleakly. Not lying but the truth was all knotted up here and tangled in the events of last evening.

"I woke up screaming," she volunteered suddenly. "I was in an odd place, a camper-like thing that suddenly I realized was moving because I was being thrown around. It was the sleeper on the truck...."

"Then...?" I prompted.

"He stopped the truck, yelling at me in English and Spanish to stop
screaming. He thought it was just a nightmare." She shuddered.

"You saw something terrible, then you dreamed about it?"

"No. I was there. I saw the car coming at me in the wrong lane. It went around a truck, missed it, but it filled the windshield, bright headlights. I swerved but no time to get out of the way. It was over so fast it almost  didn't hurt but ..." she ran down.

"That was your dream?"

She shook her head. "That was how George died."

"And you dreamed that you were George," I asked, wonderingly. Her story had grabbed me in the imagination. It almost seemed I could hear the tortured rubber, the tearing metal, the shattering glass, details unmentioned in her brief description of the event. Quite a story for an evening so close
to Halloween. I could almost feel the ghost of the dead man in the room with us.

"Yes. I was George."

Something about the way she said it. Bleakly, hopelessly.