It didn’t seem especially fair. She’d agonized over whether or not to take herself out for brunch, justifying the expense by promising she’d order the cheapest item on the menu that had any nutritional value at all. Now Sadie found herself seated at what was arguably the Overeasy’s worst table, wedged in a far corner that amplified the restaurant’s din. An amorous young couple was seated on her left; to her right was a blackboard with the day’s specials chalked in an exuberant hand. Folks still deciding on what they wanted to eat were staring in Sadie’s general direction, a few craning their necks as they struggled to make out entrees hidden by her shoulders, her hair. So be it. If clarification was needed on the Cowboy Benedict or the Jim Bridger Scramble, a server would surely be happy to oblige.
She closed her menu and shot the waitress a look. Soon enough the woman stood tableside, pad and pen at the ready. Sadie ordered a side salad and a cup of tea, relinquishing the menu with a certain reluctance. Now there would be no place for her to look.
Her order arrived in no time at all, and Sadie wondered if the waitress had plans for her table. Hands now occupied, she began watching — surreptitiously — the couple on her left. Like her, they’d been relegated to the back — and for good reason, Sadie thought. The two of them must’ve hooked up the night before, and they seemed to want everyone in the vicinity to know it. The girl in particular was taking it to the extreme. Her legs were crossed at the thigh, and a leather-booted calf swung provocatively. Or was she rubbing the fellow’s shin with her toe? Sadie would’ve had to bend at the waist and peer beneath their table to know for sure. The girl’s eyes — an unremarkable shade of blue — were heavily made up. There’d been considerable use of an eyeliner, and Sadie was reminded of a Siamese cat. The girl’s expression was one of such sated self-assurance that Sadie almost felt sorry for the young man, who was cutting French toast into oversized squares.
They were probably students. Those kids, with their meal plans and dormitory housing and money from home or a part-time job had more disposable income than most. Bozeman was a college town, and the accompanying mix of low wages and high rents was a burden borne by folks like Sadie. Whatever lessons the two were learning in school would soon be displaced by the facts of the real world. Student loans were meant to be repaid. Sadie took a small measure of satisfaction in this.
The boy stood, stuffing a hand in the front pocket of his jeans. Coins pooled on the table for the waitress. He took the ticket to the register, jacket swishing as he squeezed between tightly grouped diners. The girl, still seated, took a bite of his French toast, reaching across the table to mop up syrup puddled on his plate. And then — shockingly — she looked at Sadie and smiled. With a little wave involving just two fingers she slipped from her chair, donning a jacket with furry lapels that somehow looked both glamorous and cheap. Then she made her way to the restroom, leather boots squeezing her shapely calves.
Sadie took a sip of peppermint tea — gone cold on her — then jabbed at a cherry tomato with her fork. It’d been a while since she’d indulged in anything like French toast. She was daydreaming about sneaking a bite from the boy’s plate herself when the waitress came along and stacked it with a clatter on top of the girl’s, sighing noisily over the inconvenience of a tip left in change. She glanced expectantly at Sadie, letting her know that she was waiting to clear her table as well. A line of would-be diners was forming at the door. Sadie was not about to be rushed. She finished her tea though she no longer wanted it. There was nowhere, really, that she needed to go.
The girl’s smile stayed with Sadie, Cheshire-like, long after her boots had sashayed through the door. She’d eyed the boy with such shrewd amusement, knowing what she’d done to him, would do again. Sadie could not come up with a single time when she’d been as thoroughly convinced of her own powers. She reached for her purse. A tip — left in bills, thank you very much — was pinned beneath her mug. Pushing her arms into a longish jacket that her mother would have called a car coat, she readied herself to face the cold.
There was little point in heading home with so much of the day ahead of her. She decided to walk to the library, where a book group was meeting later that afternoon. Though she hadn’t read the novel, she knew she could prepare herself in the hour and a half that remained. All you really needed to do was familiarize yourself with a key scene. Midway through the discussion you’d burst in, expounding on the scene’s significance to the rest of the readers. How did you know which scenes were key? It didn’t matter, is what Sadie had found. Any scene was key if you insisted on it.
***
When the book group was over Sadie made her way to her car, which was parked on a side street where the two-hour parking limit didn’t apply. Though it wasn’t yet five, twilight insisted on itself. A pale strip of light flared along the horizon, but a cast-iron sky was closing down on that like a lid. Her car was freezing. The old-lady coat — which did a decent job of covering her ass when she was standing — had rucked up as she was sliding in and did little now to protect her from the ice-cold seat. The trusty Subaru started right away. Sadie headed south, crossing Kagy Boulevard just as the streetlights glimmered to life, their synchronism somehow startling. Haze plumed softly over snow-covered farmland to the east, hinting at the cold night to come.
Perhaps that’s why Sadie slowed when she saw the girl standing at the roadway’s edge. The hood was up on her beater car, and steam roiled forth urgently. Sadie would’ve known those tight boots anywhere. The café-girl lifted her chin, a smile materializing when she saw that it was Sadie behind the wheel. She gave again the little two-fingered wave, and Sadie’s foot planted itself on the brake. And then the girl was reaching for the door, which Sadie’d foolishly left unlocked, and she was pulling the door open. Kicking the snow from her boots, she clambered in.
“You’ll help me out, won’t you?” the girl was saying. “That’s not my car, and I’m just going to leave it.”
Her name, she said, was Zambu, or Zumba, or some equally far-fetched thing that Sadie promptly forgot. When asked where she wanted to go, she shrugged. “I’m between places,” is what she said. She adjusted a leopard-print scarf, pulling it up until the fabric covered her lips and nose. Her eyes, framed between that scarf and a hat, glinted knowingly, and Sadie found herself recoiling from the same amused assessment she’d watched the boy endure just hours before. What in the hell was she doing? Why oh why hadn’t she just returned the little wave and driven on?
Cars were slowing to wind around them. Their drivers peered into the Subaru, curious and annoyed. All at once, the last thing Sadie wanted was help. This situation was complicated enough. She lifted her foot from the brake, and the car eased itself gently forward. No plan for dealing with the girl had come to mind, yet Sadie found herself entering the flow of traffic and traveling on.
“What about that fellow I saw you with earlier?” Sadie asked. “Maybe he could come and get you. Or I could drop you off at his house.”
“That was just some guy,” the girl said. She folded her arms, slipping a little lower in her seat. Wavy brown hair fanned beneath her hat. She must have tinted it; in the glare of oncoming headlights it flared an unsettling crimson. She was looking out her window, emanating the sort of overblown impatience that resentful teenagers usually reserved for their parents. Surely this girl was older than that. And Sadie wasn’t her mother, had never, in fact, been anyone’s mom.
“Are you a student?” she asked. She had to be somebody’s daughter, was probably a sister, a niece. It was hard to believe. She seemed somehow to be entirely her own.
“I was, but my grades got low and they took my scholarship away. I’ve been couch-surfing since then. And I dance.” She shot Sadie a look, making sure her meaning was clear.
“You know,” she said, having gotten that much straight, “what I really need is a chance to get cleaned up. There’s this party tonight. I can work something out there.”
And so, though she knew better, Sadie continued on her way. The steaming car was left with its hood gaping in their wake. They were on Sourdough, which ran close to Sadie’s little house on the south side. The road followed a winding creek they’d soon be crossing on a single-lane bridge. The bridge had no side rails. Each time she drove over it, Sadie pictured what would happen should a wheel work its way over an edge.
Sadie’s house was nestled in a grove of cottonwoods on the creek’s far side. Some back-to-the-land types had built it in the early seventies. She’d gotten it for a song when the times soured on them, had spent the better part of a decade and a small fortune shoring the place up. The hippies hadn’t known much about construction, but they’d understood the lay of the land, calculating with success the way sunlight would enter windows on a winter afternoon. The house was charming, full of the sorts of nooks and crannies a place had when you added on because you needed to, not because you’d started out with a plan.
There were few visitors. Even in the days when Sadie’d had a lover or two, she’d preferred to go to their place — or sometimes, more daringly, to a motel. Bringing a man home felt too revealing to her. Over the years she’d filled her rooms with items she liked to see or smell or touch, most of them gathered at flea markets and secondhand stores. These things offered a clearer picture of the woman she was than her body ever would. Especially now, when her body was betraying her.
They rattled over the single-lane bridge. On the far side, the driveway curved sharply to the left. There was no garage, but the hippies had built a carport that kept a vehicle free of snow. It was an odd little structure: a roof on posts, top-heavy to the extreme. Sadie had expected it to collapse years ago, but it remained standing. She parked inside and the two exited the car.
A pathway to the house had been carefully laid in stone. The hippies had had plenty of time on their hands, and they were partial to materials that could be acquired at little cost. At the moment those stones were coated with a skim of ice. Sadie warned the girl not to slip, then felt foolish. What would a tumble on ice be compared to the other falls this girl had taken? A bump on the ass or knee would almost be welcome, a reminder that one was in fact capable of being hurt.
The girl’s resentful bearing left her when they entered the house. Sadie turned on a lamp, one with a shade sewn cleverly of hide. It threw a pleasant golden glow on the wall behind it and the girl sighed, unwinding her scarf and stuffing it into a pocket. What was she reminded of? Sadie was not about to ask. She took the coat with the furry lapels, draping it over the back of an easy chair. The girl settled in a rocker, falling at once into a steady rhythm. It came to Sadie then that the swinging leg she’d witnessed earlier at the café might only have been the girl’s way of comforting herself.
“This is a cool house,” the girl told her.
It was the first thing she’d said that wasn’t mostly meant to shock or titillate, and something stirred in Sadie. She considered telling the girl how hard she’d worked to acquire it, the hours of overtime, the saving up, the paying down. And still the place wasn’t really hers. There was a notice stashed in a kitchen drawer, a reminder of the bank’s advancing plans. A little over a year before, Sadie had been downsized out of a job. At first, she’d assumed she’d simply go out and find another — but at 51, that had proven difficult. There was always a fresher face in the applicant pool. Sadie tried hard to make herself what was wanted: someone younger, dumber, and more willing than she was. She hadn’t managed to fool anyone.
She’d worked her way through her retirement fund, proceeding from there into default and foreclosure. The date was looming when her house would go up for auction; the time had come to return her carefully curated belongings to the local thrift. Knowing that she’d soon be parting ways with her possessions was hitting Sadie hard. None of these items were particularly valuable — but when she woke in the morning, they told her who she was. The lacy curtains that filtered the sunlight. The pottery mug that fit just so in her hand. The print of a cheeky bluebird who always seemed to be trying to catch her eye. Facing the day without them would be like leaving the house without checking her reflection in the mirror. How was she supposed to know what she looked like?
She brewed a pot of tea for herself and the girl: ginger, without asking, because its fiery warmth seemed necessary. The girl sipped noisily at hers though it was too hot to drink. Sadie wondered how long it’d been since a woman had shown kindness to this girl, since anyone who didn’t have his own satisfaction in mind had offered her anything at all.
When they were done with their tea, Sadie led her guest to the bathroom. She pulled a fluffy towel from the linen closet, and the girl clasped it to her chest. Sadie found herself looking around the room, checking for items that might be pocketed. A trio of small wooden animals — a tiger, an elephant, and an incongruous squirrel — marched their way across the window’s unyielding sash. One of them might easily be stashed in the girl’s clothing. What would it matter at this point?
In the kitchen, Sadie poured herself a glass of wine while she waited out the girl’s seemingly interminable shower. Though Sadie herself wasn’t hungry, she decided to make a sandwich for her guest. Her plans for the night weren’t good ones. The least Sadie could do was to send her out fortified. Eventually the girl returned, framing herself in the kitchen doorway wrapped in Sadie’s towel. Still wet, her hair lay flattened against her scalp; without the makeup, her face was disarmingly plain. Her body, though, was lavish in its way. Without the stricture of the ill-chosen boots, her legs were lovely. Her arms, too, had the pleasant fullness of youth.
“I hate to ask,” the girl was saying, “but do you have some clothes I could borrow? My skirt’s fine. But I could really use a top and some fresh undies if you’ve got them.”
Sadie went to her room, where she selected a burgundy merino sweater and her thickest pair of socks. It was going to be cold out there tonight. The underwear proved more difficult. Everything she had was high-waisted and utilitarian: the kind of lingerie you wore when you were sure that no one would see it. Finally, she pulled a pair of silky, lace-paneled bikinis from the far reaches of a drawer, ones she’d worn back in the day. Melon, she believed that shade had been called. The elastic had lost some of its zing, but it would have to do.
She left the clothes stacked neatly on the vanity. The girl’s discarded items were nestled on the floor by the tub. Steam filled the room. Through it, Sadie could make out the three little animals marching across the sash, moisture trailing the glass behind them. The squirrel had been turned so it travelled against the tide. The girl must have picked it up to take a look, then set it back down without regard for the direction it was headed.
When Sadie returned to the kitchen the sandwich was gone, plate so clean it might have been polished with a tongue. She told the girl about the clothes she’d left in the bathroom. After she left, Sadie searched for her glass of wine. She found it on its side at the bottom of the sink, empty now, though she was certain she hadn’t finished it. Sadie rinsed the glass at the tap, filling it again halfway with wine. Better keep her wits about her. She sliced some cheese from a large brick. Wine and cheese, a typical dinner these last few months. It took the edge off on a couple of fronts.
Eventually, the girl clomped her way back to the kitchen. Her wild hair had been subdued, twin braids gathering it sedately behind her ears. Unable to catch the light, its crimson hue had vanished. It now appeared an ordinary brown. She looked much younger than she had before. The burgundy sweater was becoming. As for the suede mini-skirt with its gaudy snaps, well, there was only so much Sadie could do.
The girl grabbed her jacket from the back of the chair — ready, apparently, to be on her way. Sadie fetched hers from the hall closet and followed her guest to the door. The girl’s head was divided by a not-quite-straight part, and the pale neck at its bottom looked vulnerable to the extreme. She was playing a different card now: The Innocent Schoolgirl. Bobby socks and saddle shoes might’ve completed the outfit. But Sadie was thinking of a different time.
She wondered what the girl had done with the clothes she’d removed. Whatever she carried was small enough to fit in patch pockets on the front of her skirt. Were there things she kept elsewhere? Where did she store her lipsticks and eyeliners? Sadie shut off the lights and closed the door behind them. The rock walkway was slipperier now than ever. Frigid air worked its way past collars and cuffs. Sadie couldn’t help but wonder how anyone could walk into a night like this with no idea where they’d lay their head.
When they were safely settled in the Subaru, the girl gave Sadie directions to the party. It wasn’t terribly far, on the other side of Kagy, a bit closer to the University. Minutes later they were driving down a row of seedy bungalows clearly rented by students. Cars were clustered around one of them. Already, a couple of plastic cups had made their way into the street where they turned slow circles. The porch, lit by a single bulb, was filled with revelers though it was cold out. Shouting voices filled the air.
Sadie pulled over a short distance away. There was something she needed to say. The girl was looking out her window, anxious to get on with her plans. The gawky divide of her head reminded Sadie of Pippi Longstocking. Why in the world did she work so hard at making herself outlandish?
“Look,” Sadie said, “I hate to admit it, but I’ve forgotten your name. Could you tell me again? Mine’s Sadie. I can’t remember if I told you that.” Suddenly, their names — so definite — seemed important. You needed to know what to call one another.
The girl turned to her, minxish, and Sadie could see that she wouldn’t get what she wanted. “It’s Zildjian,” she said. “Like the cymbals. A drummer I did for a while said I reminded him. The ride, the crash, the high-hat. All of them. That’s what everybody calls me.” Pleased with herself, she opened the door. A boot was lowered coyly to the ground, and she exited the car like a movie star.
“Zil-DEE!” a male voice called from the porch. “What’s shaking, girl?”
A two-fingered wave was tossed in Sadie’s general direction, and the girl sauntered off, her swinging hips tipping her skirt like a bell.
***
At home, Sadie poured herself another glass of wine, a big one. Sleep was necessary. Without it, she’d be forced to wonder what was going on at the party. She’d set the girl loose like a scrap of paper on the wind. Sadie decided to think of her as Zildie. No way would she be calling her Zildjian — not that the opportunity was likely to present itself.
She climbed into bed, glass of wine perched like a sentinel on her nightstand. Thoughts of Zildie and what she might be up to were pushed aside by a generalized worry about what was headed her way. She’d received a notice of sale, for Christ’s sake. Sometime in the not-too-distant future, an officer would appear on her doorstep. At that point, she’d be escorted — such a lovely word — from the property. As far as the bank was concerned, she was now squatting in her own home.
Her head grew heavy, heavy enough that sleep seemed a faint possibility. Sadie downed the last of her wine. Without bothering to brush her teeth, she snugged her cheek to a pillow. Her last thought, arriving in the spaciousness of an approaching dream, was that it had been pleasant, in a way, to worry about Zildie. How much lighter were the burdens of others, even when they bore a vague resemblance to one’s own.
***
Hours later, she was awakened by a distant and delicate tapping. A glance at the bedside clock revealed it was 1:35. Her first impulse was to pull the comforter over her head and go back to sleep. The sound persisted. Whatever it was would clearly continue until Sadie got up and did something about it. She pushed back the covers and eased herself from the bed. What in the hell could it possibly be?
She made her way through the living room, not bothering to switch on a lamp, neither glare nor expense desirable. A flickering movement was framed in one of the front door’s three ascending panes: a pale wrist, a silver key. It must be Zildie. Relief and annoyance flooded Sadie at once. Why hadn’t she seen this coming? The girl knew where Sadie lived, was no doubt a master at rousing folks from their deepest slumbers.
Sadie snatched open the door. Zildie stood there, poised to tap, key in hand. Perhaps it went to the car they’d abandoned earlier. Possibly, the girl collected useless keys.
“You startled me!” Zildie cried, as if Sadie were somehow the one in the wrong. She lowered her hand, and the two sized each other up in the moonlight. Sadie knew that she’d been rumpled by a not un-drunken sleep, but the girl’s appearance made her feel downright tidy. It looked like Zildie had been running. She was flushed and out of breath, and most of her hair had freed itself from its braids. The suede skirt’s opening had swiveled to one side. Its bottom snap had come undone.
Chilly air crept past Sadie into the house. Though the night was still, the cold was keen enough to insinuate. In the basement, the furnace rumbled to life. Though she knew that fuel was going to waste, Sadie couldn’t bring herself to close the door — nor did she seem capable of inviting the girl in.
“The guy I borrowed the car from might be coming after me,” Zildie said, upping the ante. “The cops had it towed, and he was in my face about it. Like I asked the car to break down,” she added, full of self-righteous verve. Her voice was oddly muted, and Sadie wondered if her teeth were clenched to keep them from chattering. One of her boots edged its way towards the sill.
Sadie crossed her arms. She was starting to shiver, the flannel of her gown no match for the conditions.
“You’re cold aren’t you,” Zildie said, eyes aglitter. “I could warm you up, you know.” She cocked a hip, her meaning plain. And because the overture had been made, its threat vanished. All at once she was just a girl with liquor on her breath and clothing askew. Colder, certainly, than Sadie was — colder, perhaps, than Sadie had ever been.
A breeze came skittering along the creek bottom. Dead leaves that had gathered beneath the cottonwoods sputtered and hissed as they rearranged themselves. When Zildie swiveled apprehensively to check the shadows behind her, Sadie considered telling her it was only the wind. But nights like this one altered the meaning of only. The temperature was now in the single digits, and that breeze — however light — was making things feel a whole lot colder. The girl’s bare legs were pressed together, her gloveless fingers tucked beneath her arms. Yet she’d offered rather than asking — hoping she’d score a roof over her head.
“That won’t be necessary,” Sadie said finally. And then she was taking a step back, and her hand was making the downward sweep that invited a person in. Zildie pushed past her, seemingly unfazed. There was an exquisite irony in sharing a place that could no longer be called hers, and Sadie decided to run with it. All the lights were turned on, the thermostat bumped to 70 degrees. Blankets and pillows and comforters were pulled from the closet, coats and hats and gloves were strewn at Zildie’s feet. Mirth burbled in Sadie’s throat like champagne too quickly quaffed. She could hardly claim that she wouldn’t be needing these items herself when she had little idea where she might be headed.
Zildie warmed her hands on a mug of tea while Sadie added to the growing piles. This was more than the girl had bargained for, and more than anyone could possibly hope to carry.
Image by Staffan Cederborg on flickr.com, licensed under CC 2.0.
- Between Places - November 13, 2026