Stateline, Nevada was where she stopped for breakfast. She hadn’t hit a buffet in ages.
Not a bad hour and a half drive down from Fernley, Nevada where the desk clerk in the motel had kept her waiting.
The ashen man behind the cluttered front desk couldn’t pull himself away from what was apparently an urgent phone call. Something about a woman, presumably a family member, who had stolen the neighbor’s car and taken off for God knows where.
She riveted her best eavesdropping skills to the conversation. Heard the distraught caller mention something about a 1954 MG TF 1250. Years ago her father had an MG but a different model.
After that late start, she drove down to Stateline, Nevada.
She wore her green velvet jacket into the hotel. Once again she felt happy she had packed it. Waiting for the elevator to the top floor buffet, she examined herself in the copper tinted mirror.
She liked all the brass buttons, more of them than necessary. She also liked the decision she made the night before back in that grim motel room.
The time had come to ease up on her guarded behavior. She would still be appropriately cautious and make reasoned decisions. And her first decision was to no longer be deliberately invisible.
If she was to be considered capricious and whimsical, perhaps a bit flamboyant, so be it.
She was not interested in declaring a long-suppressed manifesto of suppressed and contentious beliefs. There wasn’t one. There wasn’t a closet to come out of other than a closet of deference gone too far.
Just an overdue decision to get on with her life.
She memorialized this decision by ordering a Bloody Mary.
She held up the big glass to the window, admired the mountains and whispered a toast to the woman who had stolen the neighbor’s MG.
