“So where are we going?” he asked, more to distract himself than because he really cared.
“I’ve decided to surprise you,” she said as she opened the driver’s door of her car.
He couldn’t resist the impulse to flash her a wolfish grin when he slid into the passenger’s seat. “Sounds promising.”
Fastening her seat belt, she sighed. “Are you going to spend the entire evening talking in innuendos?”
He chuckled. “That would be tiresome of me, wouldn’t it?”
“It certainly would.”
“Then I’ll try to confine myself to only an occasional innuendo.”
“I’d appreciate that,” she said and started the car.
Amused by her wry tone, he snapped his safety belt into place and sprawled back in the seat, content to let her take him where she wanted.
She drove through the now familiar downtown section and beneath an overpass into a part of town Sam hadn’t seen before. The houses here weren’t as nice as the ones in Serena’s neighborhood, and the yards were small and haphazardly landscaped. She drove past a used-car lot filled with vehicles only one step above the junkyard, and then a boarded-up former convenience store. A
fter bumping over tracks that hadn’t seen a train in years, she turned into a parking lot almost filled with pickups, sport utility vehicles and aging sedans. A neon sign above the door of the rough-sided building said Gaylord’s.
Tilting his head, Sam studied the place. “A honky-tonk?”
Serena shrugged. “Honky-tonk. Dive. Dump. Call it whatever you want, the food’s good.”
“I wouldn’t have thought this was your sort of place.”
“I’ve grown rather fond of it because I have to keep coming here to find Marvin—the managing editor of the paper. If my lecture to him paid off the other day, I guess I’ll have to find another excuse to pop in every so often.”
“Looks like I’m your excuse tonight.”
“You’ll do. Let’s go.”
Amused again by her brusque tone, he reached for the door handle. “Most flattering offer I’ve had in days.”
The inside of Gaylord’s looked very much the way Sam had expected, judging from the outside. Dim lights, crowded-together tables, a long bar at one end where solitary drinkers hunched over mugs and shot glasses. Zydeco music played from high-mounted speakers, and the decorations, such as they were, seemed meant to resemble Mardi Gras.
He’d been in places like this before, he realized abruptly—many of them. He felt oddly at home here in a way he hadn’t in the tidy diner or on the sidewalks of downtown Edstown.
“Hey, Serena. Marvin’s not here tonight.”
Serena nodded to the portly man who’d greeted her from behind the bar. “I’m not looking for Marvin tonight, Chuck. I’ve brought a friend to taste your gumbo.”
Chuck’s florid face creased with a broad grin. “He’s in for a treat, yeah? Find yourselves a seat and I’ll send someone over to you.”
“We’ll be in the nonsmoking section.”
Chuck laughed. “We’ll find you there for sure.”
Motioning for Sam to follow, Serena led the way across the large, smoke-filled room to a somewhat secluded table in the back corner.
“This is the nonsmoking section?” Sam asked as he held her seat for her.
“This and the table on either side. I’ve been trying to convince Chuck to section off a bigger area that actually is smoke free, but he’s strongly resistant to any sort of change.”
The scents of smoke and beer swirled around them, tugging again at Sam’s memories. One of the articles he’d read at the library had mentioned that the sense of smell was a powerful cue to memory. So was the sense of taste, he discovered when he took a sip of the beer a waitress set in front of him a few minutes later.
He’d ordered beer because Serena had told him that was what the regulars usually drank here, though she had declined anything but water. The taste didn’t stir specific memories in him, but rather a jumble of confused emotions. He couldn’t say they were good feelings—something about the taste of the beer on his tongue was rather too familiar and somewhat depressing. He had a vague image of himself sitting alone in a darkened room, drinking beer from a can, a TV flickering in front of him.