Tonasket, Washington laughs softly at the rest of the world.
Just south of the Canadian border on the Okanogan River, Tonasket doesn’t have a care in the world.
In another world, at the Hotel-Bel Air in Los Angeles, an otherwise reserved woman in a white dress laughed as well. Just about everyone else on the patio joined in.
The woman in the UCLA cap returned to her table. The pale man slid his phone in the inside breast pocket of his Harvey’s Lake Tahoe satin jacket, stood up and left.
The woman in the white dress approached the woman in the UCLA cap to offer congratulations. She invited the woman and her companions to join them at her table and to celebrate, as she put it, the restoration of civility.
Pitchers of mimosas arrived.
A few minutes later, the five of them seemed as thick as thieves, as if friends reunited following a long absence.
But for all their cheer, their voices were cautiously muted. Details of their conversation went unheard by others on the patio.
There they sat, five spirits asunder.
The woman in the white dress with black hair tied back with a magenta ribbon, on the run from the cartel.
The woman in the UCLA cap, an accomplished car thief and pickpocket, on the run from the law.
The woman in a green velvet blazer, on the run from her deferential past.
The geologist in Merrell hiking boots, on the run from her former fracking employer.
And the geologist’s brother, thinking he too would like to be on the run from something, starting to consider the possibilities.
At their corner table by the languid banana palm, they all laughed in much the same soft way Tonasket, Washington laughs.
