The trip from Arrow's house to Spokane is actually five hours, not four. The driving time from Seattle to Spokane is four, but before you get on the road, you need to take the ferry from Bremerton to Seattle, which is an hour.

In other words, I had a ton of time to think. If only I was able to think.

My brain had short-circuited. I couldn't comprehend Arrow's insane proposal. It wouldn't replay in my head. My mind, for once, was well and truly blown. My head was totally empty.

I drove the Boxster onto the ferry, turned off the engine, and climbed the stairs to the passenger area. Once there, I plopped down at a table in the sun. After staring into space for a few minutes, I dug into my pack and pulled out the little box. I opened it and placed it in the sun. The diamond caught the sun and magnified it. The effect was insanely, blindly bright, but I didn't care. I let it glow. People paused and stared, but I must have looked terribly depressed, because only one person dared to stop and talk. Her name was Jane — no last name given. She was in her late fifties, about as old as I'd be if were still Fred.

"Have you put it on your finger yet?" she asked.

"No," I replied.

"Are you going to?"

"No."

"Then why do you still have it?"

"The ring?" Her question snapped me out of my trance. After giving my head a wake up! shake, I shut the little box with a dull snap and shoved it all the way down to the bottom of my backpack. "He didn't want to hear my answer right away."

"Did he know you'd say no?"

"No," I replied. "He assumes I'll say yes."

"But you won't."

"No. Not for all the tea in China."

Jane smiled. "And yet you sit and stare at the ring."
 

The conversation with Jane lasted a lot longer than I would have liked. Jane was a busybody, which (believe it or not) was fine at the start. It was nice to have someone else go through all my thoughts and feelings. It was like having someone fold your laundry for you. Nice, right? Except, imagine that they have a dozen questions for every item they touch. And not questions about whatever it is you're talking about. Just questions. Personal questions. That was Jane. She'd obviously gone through some marriage drama of her own. She didn't say so, but you could see it behind the questions she asked. Once upon a time maybe she had had to say no. Maybe she had lacked the courage to say no, and ended up marrying the wrong person.

I'm just guessing, and honestly I don't care. I did find myself wondering at times whether she was wanted something from me besides the details of my personal life. But Jane wasn't a con man. She was just a busybody.

The difference between a con man and a busybody is that a con man gives you something to win your trust; they hand you their heart, so to speak. With it, they buy your trust. Only then do they work their scam. The busybody, on the other hand, simply takes. They don't give you even the smallest part of themselves. They never confide in others. They don't bother to win your trust. They're opportunists: if they see your front door open, they walk in, look around, and start opening drawers and cabinets. They keep going until their time or their curiosity runs out, or you catch them in the act and throw them out.

Jane saw right away that I was vulnerable: I had (in a sense) left my front door open. It must have been obvious: a young girl, traveling alone, staring at an engagement ring. If Arrow hadn't made his stupid marriage proposal I would have been more on my guard. Jane wouldn't have found an opportunity to talk.

Still, as I said, at first it was a good thing. She drew me out. She made me talk about what had happened, what I felt, what I meant to do, what I wanted to say to Arrow, and so on. It helped to clarify things for me.

Then, Jane made a misstep: she wanted to know where I was going. Not to be rude, I told her. On that pretext, she dove into what she expected to be a deep pool of negative feelings, resentments, and existential doubts.

"Are you angry?" she asked me. "Hurt? Afraid?"

"No," I replied, puzzled. Why would I feel hurt or afraid? Honestly I wasn't paying attention. I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Meeting your birth mother for the first time! That's a big event in a young girl's life!" Jane declared, watching my face, hungrily waiting for my reactions.

Meeting my birth mother? "Oh, please," I said dismissively. "I am tired to death of that subject."

Quite naturally, Jane assumed that my indifference was feigned; that it was only a cover for my real, much stronger feelings. She kept poking and digging, trying to ferret out the angst and depression she was sure I kept inside.

Instead, all she did was irritate me. I'm sure she knew that she was irritating me, but she kept on doing it. I told her outright that I didn't feel like talking any more, but she kept on. I told her again, but again she ignored it. In spite of my frowns, my monosyllabic answers, the way I kept looking at the time — and in spite of my final lapse into silence — she kept up a steady stream of questions. Time to walk away, I told myself, and grabbing my pack, I told her that I needed some air. She followed me outside. I walked away from her while she was talking, but still she followed. I couldn't shake her off. She clung to me like an emotional leech.

Thankfully, I hadn't told her about my car. Arrow was quite right: when I got to Spokane, I would make that car disappear. If Jane had known I was going to my car, she would have asked for a ride. Even if I'd said no, she would have walked along with me. I was determined to deny her the opportunity. A few moments after the announcement to Please go to your cars, I saw my chance: Jane went fishing in the depths of her bag, trying to find her phone.

Without a word, I turned and sprinted up an outside staircase to the next level. There, out of her sight, I took a different staircase down, all the way to the car level. I didn't feel safe until I was locked inside, sitting in the driver's seat, with my beanie hiding my hair and my Ray-Bans disguising my face. Again, I had to admit it. Arrow was right: Don't compromise your escape.
 

When people think of Washington state, they usually picture Seattle's Space Needle and think of the word rain. It's fair, I suppose. There are actual rain forests on the Olympic Peninsula, west of Seattle.

What most people don't know is that the eastern part of the state is desert. Desert desert. Dry, empty, except for a sparse sprinkling of little towns with two-digit populations. There's very little to see, so there's plenty of "scope for the imagination," as Anne Shirley would say. In other words, plenty of time to talk to myself, curse and swear, and smack the steering wheel in frustration.

Stupid Arrow! Stupid, stupid Arrow and his stupid, stupid ring! The solution was simple, of course: I'd tell him no. It would never work. He would drive me up the wall.

Of course I wanted to be his friend, and maybe occasionally his lover, but never his wife.

I'd just finished one life and started another. It was not the time to get tied down. Kristy and I were married for more than 20 years... I forget exactly how many more... I never could remember. The point was, my life had just begun again. Arrow could live another 30 years! I would be 48 before I'd be free again. There was just no way.

Still, the ring... the stupid ring. I wished I could tell him no and keep the ring, but that could never happen.

That was one thing Jane had gotten badly wrong. She thought that I was staring at the ring because I was indecisive. No. There was no way I would marry Arrow. NEVER. I was quite confident that it would NEVER happen, and yes, I had ZERO qualms about using the word NEVER, in spite of Diane's superstitious warning about that word.

The reason I was staring at the ring was something quite different. For an ordinary girl, a girl who'd grown up as a girl, the ring would have represented the relationship. Her feelings about the ring would reflect her feelings about the man and her vision of their future together. Or the feeling that they had no future together.

For me, the ring represented something entirely different. Here I was, not even two weeks a girl, and already I had a marriage proposal. The ring was a very concrete and expensive proof that I had become someone else. The term objective correlative came to mind: the ring, just by its existence, proved that this wasn't a dream. I really was Dexie Lane, an eighteen-year-old girl.

It also represented just how complicated this new life seemed to be from the very get-go. I assumed that I could simply pick up and live any way I pleased; that I could go anywhere and do or be whoever and whatever I wished. Instead, I kept finding myself entangled in remnants of my life as Fred and complications from Dexie's personal history. Everything conspired to tie me down.

Arrow was just supposed to be a simple fling: an exemplary case of casual sex. Instead, it turned into a marriage trap that could potentially tie me up until I was as old as Fred was when he died.

This trip was another example: I never wanted to go! I didn't want to meet Dexie's mother — or worse, Benevolence, her apparent father. But again, everything conspired to compel me to go. If I didn't go, if I didn't cross it off the list of Dexie's Things To Do, people would pester me about it until the day I died. They'd look at me as if I were a heartless monster if I didn't go.

But Dexie... the real Dexie... she wanted to go. She was quite excited about going to Spokane. In fact, it was the first and only time I'd seen her display any excitement. She positively looked forward to meeting her mother. I didn't see any trace of anger or resentment or doubt.

Now that I thought about it, Dexie had never shown any resentment toward anyone, not even toward her foster family, the Lanes. In spite of the way they treated her! And to think: in her mind they didn't even have the excuse of being a foster family. Not that it would be a valid excuse, but if she'd known she wasn't their child, she would have had an explanation for their behavior.

I couldn't understand Dexie's positive attitude. I guess I never understood her at all. No, it's not a guess: I'm *sure* I didn't. I'd always told myself that there was nothing to know.

And now, Dexie was gone. Poor Dexie! She was dead, stopped in her tracks before her life had really begun.

I pictured her in my place, a smile on her face, the phrase I'm going to see my mother! on her lips.

Then, weirdly enough, I pictured her picturing me in her place. I pictured her laughing. Why? Because if Dexie couldn't go, I was sure would have wanted me to go in her place. That's what Dexie would do.

So, sure, yeah, I could go in Dexie's place. It wasn't hard to see what she'd want me to do.

But what would *she* do, now, if she were in my shoes? Who knows? If she'd gone North by herself, could she have gone to Arrow's house? I suppose so. Would she have found the same chemistry? Maybe she would have. Chemistry is a physical thing, isn't it? Would Arrow have helped her prepare? He might. He is both kind and overbearing — he's that way with everybody. So, yes, he probably would have listened to her story and helped her prepare for the trip. Would he have lent her this car? Again, yes, probably. It was the sort of thing Arrow would do.

Would he have gotten down on one knee to her, like an idiot?

Ha! I don't know. Maybe he would have. Maybe part of his proposal was provoked by his wanting a young bride, to prove his virility. Who knows?

Would Dexie have said yes?

*That* was an interesting question. Interesting because I had no idea what the answer could possibly be. Would she be pleased? Would she pull back from his controlling dominance? Would she write him a letter of recommendation for his sexual performance?

I laughed at that thought. Letters of recommendation. Who does that?

Still, I couldn't stop picturing Arrow on his knee, holding a ring in front of the *real* Dexie. Not me. The Dexie who was born Dexie. Dexie herself, alive.

Picturing that was as irresistible as staring at the diamond ring. What would Dexie do?

The fact that I didn't know, and couldn't guess, only spotlighted the abyss that lay between me and the girl whose life I was now living.

The real Dexie was gone. Irrecoverably gone.
 

Arrow had chosen a parking garage, and the car's GPS guided me to it. I parked in a spot covered by two security cameras, and took everything except the go bag, which I left in the trunk.

The go bag was an option for the worst-case scenario: it was there if things got so bad that I needed to leave with nothing but what I was wearing. The bag contained a complete change of clothes, including sneakers. It had a stack of energy bars, a pay-as-you-go cell phone with activation card, $200 in cash, and a photocopy of my drivers license. It also contained a big pack of wet wipes (in case I needed to "shower" on the run), along with unscented baby powder and a hair brush (to serve as a dry shampoo).

There was also a six-pack of two-liter water bottles.

I put the car key in a magnetic box, and with a little struggle managed to fix it to a hidden, hard-to-reach spot underneath the car.

After all that, I honestly felt a lot better and much more secure, knowing it was there, ready, whenever I needed it.

Hopefully, I wouldn't need it.
 

Before I left the garage I tried calling my mother again, but once again, I only got the machine.

Arrow had questioned whether this was some sort of ploy. "It might be a trick to get you to go to that diner."

"It can't be that," I told him. "For one thing, it's unnecessary, and for another, they have no reason to think I know about the diner. It was Lane who mentioned it, not Lizzie."

I took a cab to the bus station and walked around for a bit. I found the arrival gate for the bus from Seattle. That done, I took a different cab to my hotel. The Happy Place was directly across the street. I took a few moments to assess the angles and the view.

Arrow had made my reservation, which irked me, even if it did save me the bother. He had asked for "second floor, front," and the view from one of the windows was perfect. I could see the entire storefront, and through the glass the first few tables. A filmy, very dusty curtain covered the window, and allowed me to watch the diner without being seen. Once I cleared the lamp and clock-radio off the nightstand, I had a perfect perch.

I watched for twenty minutes. Nothing happened. I could only see three of the customers. None of them were redheads. No one came in or out, except when the cook emerged to smoke a cigarette. He lit a second one, and the waitress came out. She spoke. He spat. He gesticulated. They argued briefly and intensely, but I couldn't hear a word: my windows were closed, and I was pretty sure they'd hear if I opened one.

The waitress went back inside. The cook scowled, spat again, and hurled his cigarette into the gutter. Then he, too, went back inside.

Watching the diner was even more boring than it sounds.

On the other hand, it did bring back memories. Nowadays you don't see many diners, but when I was a kid there was one in every town. At least, in every town I'd ever been in. Most, but not all diners, had the glass-and-steel look of a streamlined train — as did the Happy Place. The diners I knew were open 24 hours a day, and after a night of partying, my friends and I would often finish the evening with breakfast at a diner.

For that reason, I have a certain nostalgia for diners. When you've ended so many memorable nights that way — good and bad nights — you develop a certain comfortable feeling for that world of steel and glass and formica.

My experience with diners became even more intimate during the summer after my second year of college. I got a job as a short-order cook at a diner near school, and I kept that job until the summer after I graduated. During those two years, there were periods when I worked every day. I pulled maybe a dozen 24-hour stints.

In the end, I got tired of it. I'd begun to feel like my skin was covered in grease. After I quit the diner and got what my father called a "real" job, I avoided diners, so I didn't notice when the diners all quietly disappeared.

Yet here was one, an old-style streamlined diner: the Happy Place. A blast from the past, decked out in steel, glass, and formica. From my perch I could even make out the little jukebox controls on every table.

After checking in with Arrow, and a few boring hours of watching, I began to get hungry. I could have called the front desk to ask for a recommendation, but after sitting for hours in the car and then the room, I needed to move. I wanted to get outside. So I walked downstairs.

"If you're hungry," the man at the desk informed me, "the diner across the street is your best bet. The food's pretty good."

"Well, maybe," I said. "What are the alternatives?"

"Do you have a car?" he asked.

"No," I replied.

"Well, unless you feel like calling a cab, it's either the diner or the pizza place around the block. Between you and me, though, I wouldn't eat anything that oozed out of THAT place. And I've had all my vaccinations."

"Okay," I laughed. "I give up: the Happy Place it is!"