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Before the concert I contacted friends in Ashland who had offered that I stay with them whenever I was in town too late to drive home. John said certainly I could stay there that night; the guest room had a separate entrance, so I should park by the porch, then walk down the pea gravel and down the steps to that room. He would leave the porch light on and would set out a pillow for me. He told me how to identify his driveway, which, he said, might be hard to find in the dark. He said Jeff Golden lived next door. It was after eleven when I started down John's street. After the bend, I looked for the truck and then counted two driveways past it and saw the telephone pole with the steel box and three reflectors and then the driveway to the left. I didn't see the Joe Charter campaign sign, but I figured I had missed it in the dark and went on down the driveway. I parked by the front porch, where the light was on. I had thought John meant a light at the guest room, but maybe I had misunderstood. I sat in the car, hoping this was the right house, but when nothing happened, I started down the gravel, which led to a little guest house. There were no steps, but there was a little incline. Was that what John had meant? I took a deep breath at the threshold. If the door was locked, I would know I was wrong. I turned the knob. The door opened. I walked in and switched on the light. Hm. John hadn't mentioned that the house was still under construction, but he had only recently built his house, so it wasn't too surprising. There was a couch in the front room. I had expected a bed, but John had told me to bring my sleeping bag, so maybe I had made an assumption. I was sorry to see he had forgotten the pillow. Tiptoeing through the half-finished little house (hoping the three bears wouldn't come home), I found a bathroom, which was unfinished but looked usable. Then I sat tentatively on the couch and waited. Nothing happened, so I shook out my sleeping bag, took out my contact lenses, and was just starting to undress when there was a knock on the door. It was John. "You're in the wrong house!" he said. "This is Jeff Golden's house." Oh, my God, I really was Goldilocks! I jumped up in alarm and gathered my things. John was agitatedly pointing out everything that didn't match his directions; I was defensively accounting for discrepancies by the dark or vague memory or misunder-standing over the telephone, and then I realized that he was saying, "It's not my fault," and that my saying, "I'm not as dumb as it seems," implied that it was his fault, so I just let it be and thanked him for rescuing me. He told me that Jeff was gone for the week-end and I might as well leave my car there, so I followed him the few yards between the two houses and stepped over the little fence into his yard, where everything fell visually into place: the parking space next to the porch, the light on at the guest room, the pea gravel leading to the steps. The room was fully constructed and had a real bed, with a pillow. There were towels in the bathroom. I slept soundly that night in the bed I was supposed to be in. I did have a strange dream, though, in which Jeff Golden came home to find a bear in his bed. |
