I hadn’t started out there. I left the empty hotel room and the horse in the street and went to the diner where we’d gone only a couple of days before but now seemed years ago. I sat around there for a while before I couldn’t take it and had to go somewhere else, somewhere we’d never been. I called Frank again. I texted him again. I called the rental car place. I called all the rental car places. I called the bus station. I didn’t call Froehmer. I sat in the diner and watched it fill up with people heading off to work, rushing in and out as if the world couldn’t wait for them, as if they made a difference in the world. I sat and looked at my phone over and over until I had to put it in my pocket. I couldn’t sit there anymore, in the sound of people hurrying, knowing exactly where they were going and what they were going to do. I didn’t know. All I knew was that I had to get out of there, so I walked around, back to the hotel. The horse was gone. I went back to the room and lasted there only a couple of minutes before I had to leave again.

I had wandered around and then wandered into the nearest bar that was open. It wasn’t even noon yet. Frank was gone and I didn’t know what to do or where to go or what to tell Froehmer. I had to tell him something. I had to do something. I had to figure it out. I was going to sit around anyway, so why not sit around in a bar, where that’s what they expect you to do?

There were maybe five people in the place, and the two women at the end of the bar looked at me with disapproval. A thick guidebook was on the bar between them and they passed a phrase book back and forth. They spoke Italian to each other and tried to speak English to the bartender, who stood near them, ignoring me. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and probably wouldn’t have wanted to anyway.

I was the only guy in the place, and had clearly, unwittingly entered a lesbian bar. I didn’t care. I only wanted a place to think, and I didn’t want to go to a diner. The two Italian lesbians at the bar were dressed alike, in blue jeans and matching gray hoodies. They had short black hair and dark eyes that kept returning to me. They didn’t look alike, despite their best efforts. They knew what I looked like, though; they were noticing everything about me. I thought about leaving, but I stayed put and looked at the bartender every now and then. Finally she came over.