Roseville

After leaving her ailing vehicle with the mechanic, Renee went exploring.

A small, cherub-faced woman descended on her, almost as if she’d been lying in wait. “Hey, are you new in town?”

“Yeah.” Renee smiled warily. “Just looking for someplace to get a coffee.”

“Starbucks is just past that stop light up ahead.”

“Ah.” She crinkled her nose. “I was hoping for something more … local.”

The cherubic smile wavered. “Well, there’s the McDonald’s over on Park Street.”

Renee snorted softly. The woman scowled at her.

“My son-in-law owns that McDonalds, and he’s about as local as you can get.” Her arms were crossed, and her face had gone pink. “His family goes back seven or eight generations around here. They helped found this town. Everybody in Roseville knows that.”

“Okay. Well, maybe I’ll check it out.”

The arms uncrossed and the smile returned. “You go straight up here ‘til you get to the church, then turn left. It’ll be on the next corner. You tell ‘em Lorna sent you.” Lorna waved her off. “Welcome to Roseville!”

She pulled out her phone to tweet about the coffee deficiencies of the backwoods as she continued up the road. She was scrolling through Instagram when a tattooed man carrying a takeaway cup collided with her, spilling tea all over himself. He tutted and stalked off while she sputtered an apology.

The shop he’d erupted out of was called Tea-licious, and Renee thought she might be saved from the horrors of chain coffee. She went in, and the smell of warm sugar filled the air. A lady with white hair and red lipstick smiled from behind the counter. “What can I get you?”

“Coffee?” Renee smiled hopefully.

The lady in the red lipstick pursed her lips. “You sure you don’t want tea? We’ve got all kinds.”

“I’d prefer coffee,” Renee said, “if possible.”

It was instant. The first sip made her grimace, and the tea lady shook her head. One of the women at the next table said, “Well, it is a tea shop.”

Renee flushed. “I guess it doesn’t matter as long as it’s got caffeine in it.”

“I’m Cathy,” the woman said. “This is Louise.”

Renee and Louise said, “Nice to meet you” at the same time and giggled.

“What brings you to Roseville?” Cathy asked.

“Car trouble. I was just passing through, but I’m stuck here until they can get the parts to fix it.”

“So you met Aaron already?” Seeing the blank look on Renee’s face, Cathy continued, “Aaron’s the mechanic. He’s my brother.”

“Oh! Yeah, he seemed to know what he was talking about.”

“Yeah, he’s good. He fixes all our cars.” She gestured to the room at large.

“Isn’t he the only mechanic in town?”

Cathy looked askance at her. “Yeah. Because he’s good. What do you need another mechanic for when you’ve got a good one?”

“Yeah, totally.” Renee took a sip of the terrible excuse for coffee. “Is there a hotel in town?”

The tea lady, Cheryl, turned out to be the proprietor of the only bed and breakfast in Roseville. Cheryl explained that her rooms were nothing fancy and felt Renee would be more comfortable at the Holiday Inn thirty miles away, where they had an ice machine, an indoor pool, and room service. Renee gave her solemn word that she could cope without such amenities for a few days. Cheryl pursed her lips and said, “Alright then.”

Louise and Cathy invited Renee to join them for a drink later. They didn’t want her sitting alone in her room all evening, they said. People were so nice in Roseville, Renee thought as she freshened up for the evening. She was accustomed to being invisible back home. The city never sleeps, but it’s always looking the other way, preoccupied with opening nights, the price of Brent crude oil, Fashion Week, and the latest iPhone. You are beneath its notice, just there to help keep the wheels spinning. Every morning, she’d join the sea of worker ants scurrying to and fro as one mass. She’d stare down at her phone or book or feet, trying to shut out the others and find the space that was just hers. Out here there was room to breathe. There was enough space to invite people in. You didn’t have to be always pushing them away.

The room Cheryl had given her was bigger than her whole apartment back home. Outside the window there were trees. A veritable forest. There were probably old oaks so big you couldn’t wrap your arms all the way around. City trees never got the chance to grow fat. They were caged up, confined to little holes carved out of the concrete. Whenever one reached too hard for the light, people in fluorescent vests came out to hack it back and save the overhead power lines.

As she strolled to the pub, she wondered how much a house in Roseville would cost.

Louise and Cathy were already there when she arrived, and they introduced her to Lisa and Miles. When she ordered chardonnay, Miles said, “You can’t drink wine at The Beer Hall!”

“Oh Lord,” Cathy muttered. “It’s the coffee all over again.”

“Ignore them,” Louise told her. “You go ahead and drink whatever you want. In fact, let’s get a bottle of wine.”

They sat outside, and the bottle of wine turned into two, and then they moved on to number three. Soon these small-town strangers felt like old friends.

“Everyone’s so friendly here,” Renee said. “No one ever talks to you in the city.”

“Everybody talks to you here,” Louise said. “There’s nowhere to hide.” She bared her teeth and made her hands into claws.

Renee laughed. “It’s refreshing. I live in a building with 200 other people, and I don’t even know any of their names.”

“You should say hello sometime.”

“Can’t. Only creeps and crazies talk to strangers.”

Louise laughed. “We were strangers a few hours ago. So which one are we, creeps or crazies?”

“How do you live like that?” Cathy said. “Surrounded by people but never saying a word to them.”

Renee shrugged. “It’s just normal there. I spend all day sitting in my cubicle. Then I go home to a slightly bigger cube. I don’t really pay attention to what’s going on outside my little cubbyhole. Nobody does.”

“I’d get claustrophobic cooped up in one of those little apartments.”

“I was just thinking about how nice it would be to move out here somewhere.” Renee ran her finger around the rim of her glass. “I’d miss all the cultural stuff like the theatres and art galleries, but a simpler way of life sounds really appealing. Living in a quaint little village like this. Maybe I'd get a job on a farm and just be outside all day.” She breathed deeply and looked up at the stars.

“You don’t want to work on a farm." Lisa shook her head. "I did that one summer. It was awful. Chickens in little bitty cages, all stacked on top of each other. There were a hundred thousand of them to a barn, like a horrible chicken warehouse. They only had a space the size of a piece of paper to eat and shit and lay their eggs in. The smell was unbelievable.”

“That’s awful.”

“I really needed the money, but I couldn’t be a part of that. I walked out on the job." Lisa picked at the label on her beer bottle. "It didn’t make any difference though. It doesn’t stop them. They just get someone else to do it.”

“My cousin got some rescue chickens from one of those battery farms,” Miles said. “They were scared to leave their cages. They had this huge field of green grass and bugs to peck at, but they wouldn’t go out.”

“They’ve been caged up their whole lives. It’s all they know.”

“Did you ever notice,” said Renee, “how we’re interchangeable?” The wine was making her philosophical now.

“What do you mean?”

“You quit because you didn’t like what they were doing with the chickens. But who cares what you think? There’s always a line of people desperate for money waiting to replace you. It’s the same where I work. If somebody leaves, they just plug a new person into the gap, and the system keeps chugging along as if you never existed. Every cubicle looks the same. Everyone sits at their identical desk behind their identical computer, wearing an identical navy blue suit.” She poured herself some more wine. “Did you know there’s a guy at work who still calls me Rebecca? She’s the woman I replaced a year and a half ago. He hasn’t noticed I’m a different person.”

“Yeah,” Miles said, “because you just stay in your little cubes and nobody talks to each other. You should try being more quaint like us.”

“It’s the same in real life.” Renee was quite inebriated now. “You split up with a guy and you find someone else. Only, he’s no different from the last guy. Maybe he’s got a different job or a different haircut, but fundamentally it’s just the same as any other relationship.”

“Maybe you just have bad taste in men,” Cathy said.

“My ex had his next girlfriend all lined up by the time he broke it off with me. ‘This one’s getting a bit flabby and wrinkly, time to look for a new one.’ I moved out of our apartment and she moved in. Interchangeable. At the end of the day it’s just about having a warm body next to you.”

Louise put a sympathetic hand on her arm. "It doesn't have to be like that."

“You notice how they don’t even see you unless they’re on the pull? They walk right into you on the street like you’re invisible.”

“Sounds like you need to get out of that city, girl,” Lisa said.

“Happened to me here too. Happened just today. Minding my own business and this guy just ploughs into me, and I’m the one apologising. He just came charging out the door like a bull out of a china shop.”

“It’s a bull in a china shop,” Cathy said.

“What is?”

“The saying. It’s a bull in a china shop, not a bull out of a china shop.”

“He was coming out of the shop. How would you even get a bull even into a shina chop?”

“You don’t. It’s just an expression.”

“It would have to be a very small bull. A baby bull.”

“And she thinks we’re simple,” Miles said.

“Then it grows up and—” She knocked her glass to the ground and it shattered on the concrete.

“Okay, let’s get you back to Cheryl’s.” Louise tried to help her up.

“Staaayyyy!” She pulled at Louise. “We’re having such a good time!”

A man hoisted her to her feet. He was warm and smelled faintly of cologne.

***

When she came downstairs in the morning, Cheryl was sitting at a table with Lorna and a woman Renee didn’t recognise. They went quiet when she came in.

“Morning,” Renee said meekly.

“Coffee?” Cheryl asked, not looking at her.

Her head throbbed. “Green tea please.”

She wasn’t sure if she was supposed to sit with the women or keep to herself. She split the difference and sat at a neighbouring table.

“Heard you had a big night last night,” said the one Renee didn’t know.

“Just had a few drinks.” She smiled faintly. “Made some friends.”

Lorna huffed, and Renee looked at her. “Cheryl said you woke her up at one o’clock in the morning, drunk as a skunk,” she said. “Shouting about ice and room service.”

“It’s fine,” Cheryl said as she thrust the tea in front of Renee.

“I’m so sorry,” Renee said. “Everyone was so nice and I was having such a good time. I think I just got carried away.”

Lorna scoffed. “Literally. Rodney had to haul you back here and put you into bed.”

“Who’s Rodney?”

“And then you grabbed him and tried to get him into bed with you, he said!” Lorna was pink again. “After Cathy was so nice to you.”

“Rodney?” Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember a Rodney.

“If you went to McDonald’s like you said you were going to, you’d know who Rodney is,” Lorna snapped. “Or if you weren’t so drunk.”

 “Are you mad because I didn’t go to McDonald’s?”

“Well why say you’re going when you’re not going?”

“I never said I was going!” She clutched the hot mug. “I came in here to have tea instead.”

“You didn’t have tea. You had coffee. And you made a face when you drank it.”

“Look, I just wanted some rural charm, okay?”

Cheryl tutted softly.

“Why waste my time asking where McDonald’s is if she’s not going there?” Lorna was addressing the woman next to her, who was nodding in agreement.

“How do you even know where I went or what face I made? Are you stalking me or something?”

“I told you I know everyone in this town. Everybody knows everyone in this town.”

“And there’s nothing to do here except gossip?”

“Well, we’re not as sophisticated as you are," Lorna spat. "We don’t have any museums or theatres or culture like you do in the big city, so we make do.”

“Get a life.” Renee got up, leaving her tea undrunk, and retreated to the tranquillity of her room.

She sent a text to Louise. “Sorry about last night. I have a feeling I embarrassed myself.”

Louise replied, “Forget it. Safe drive back to the city.”

She thought about going back to bed, sleeping away the days until her car was fixed and she could leave, but she couldn’t settle. Outside, the apple blossoms danced in the breeze. She tried to open the window, but it was painted shut.

She thanked the gods when the phone rang to tell her the car was ready. As she walked to the garage, someone wolf whistled from a van and shouted something about free servicing any time she needed it, darlin’.

When she got there, the mechanic—Axel or Ambrose. Or maybe this was Rodney?—said, “The parts I ordered aren’t in yet of course, but I’ve got a car I’m fixing up out back, so I borrowed parts off of there. No charge, of course. Just wanted to get you back on the road quicker.”

As she drove out of town, she felt every house staring at her. Gawking. For the first time in her life, she found the motorway peaceful. As it slid smoothly away beneath her, her headache started to ease.

Roseville seemed far away when she stopped for lunch. There was a fridge full of identical sandwiches at the service station, distinguishable from each other only by the fine print on their labels. Tuna salad. Chicken salad. Egg salad. She picked one up  and got a grim cappuccino that came out of a machine, perfectly uniform every time. The teenager working the cash register took her money without seeing her. She ate alone in the car park and watched the people come and go. It was pleasant there, enclosed in the upholstered capsule of her car, watching the world go by.