The tree stood at the edge of a polluted field that bordered a high-security prison. Each year she would drive up from the city and tie a black ribbon around its scarred and dented trunk. She would put down fresh flowers and clear away the dead leaves and litter, the butts and beer cans and fast food trash tossed from passing cars. One year she found a gold ring and mused that it had belonged to the fiancé of an inmate denied parole. Along with a domestic terrorist and a prominent investment swindler the prison held the Cold Cut Killer, a serial murderer who, after dismembering his victims and placing them in a scented garbage bag, would go into their refrigerators and fix himself a sandwich. Reportedly he preferred olive loaf. Elise would try not to think of him covered in blood and building a dagwood as she tended to the ribbon, a large spool of which she’d bought from an arts and crafts store that had since become a medical marijuana dispensary. She had thought the ribbon should be yellow until she discovered online that yellow represented a hope for someone’s return, and Eddie definitely wasn’t returning. There was in fact a whole list of colored ribbons and their meanings, some of them bizarrely obscure. Periwinkle was for irritable bowel syndrome, light green for sexually transmitted diseases, hot pink for cleft palate, indigo for GERD. Black was for mourning. It was also for insomnia, but anyone who saw the tree, a towering oak near a sharp curve in the road, would understand what the ribbon meant.

The day was Saturday, November 3. Eddie had died on the first, but it wasn’t always possible for Elise to visit the tree on the exact date due to her erratic schedule. She was a part-time adjunct whose teaching assignments were entirely dependent on the whims and biases of the department chair, a perky younger woman who began all her emails with “Hi, friends! How the heck are ya?” Elise disliked her but feigned an interest in the chair’s betta fish, Meg and Melinda. “They are just so adorable,” she would say, gazing in fake wonderment at the lifeless little fish in the bowl on the chair’s desk. She often worried that when the fish went, so would her livelihood.

She left her apartment and walked through the morning chill to the rental agency a few blocks away. An hour later she was plowing up the Thruway in a Mustang GT convertible the color of a peach highlighter. She’d reserved an economy car, but the Mustang was all they had left. It was big and low-slung and the slightest tap on the gas sent it lunging ahead with a roar, the padded steering wheel vibrating in her cold hands. In the deep leather seat she felt as small as a child. She hadn’t dared put the top down.

At the first rest area she used the bathroom and got free coffee. She sat in the car watching the truckers and travelers stretch and yawn and check their phones. A man in camo pants and a Micky Mouse sweatshirt was yelling at a drinking fountain. Then he dropped to the paving and did push-ups, counting off in an angry voice. This rest stop had some winners. Last year a woman asked Elise to scratch her back. Obliging her, Elise followed the woman’s commands to go lower and lower until she had to say, “That’s as low as I go, hon,” whereupon the woman told her to “go shit in a sock” and got into a minivan with a kayak tied to the roof and drove away.

She finished the lukewarm coffee and guided the Mustang toward the exit. Standing at the end of the on-ramp was a girl holding a cardboard sign that said ALL THAT WE SEE OR SEEM IS BUT A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM. OSWEGO OR BUST. Elise thought it was clever. She had never picked up a hitchhiker before. She hesitated, drawing a blast from the air horn of the eighteen-wheeler behind her. Quickly she pulled over and the truck stormed past. The girl got in with her sign and a tan Hermès shoulder bag. She tossed the sign in the back seat with the ribbon and the bouquet of purple asters Elise had picked up that morning.

“That’s Poe,” Elise said.

“What?”

“‘A Dream Within a Dream,’ by Edgar Allan Poe. A wonderful poem. I’ve taught it before.”

“It’s not my sign,” the girl said. “Somebody gave it to me.”

“So you’re not going to Oswego?”

“I’m going to Buffalo.”

“I’m not going anywhere near there,” Elise said, “but I’ll take you as far as I can.”

The girl looked sixteen or seventeen and had gray-green eyes and straggly brown hair. She wore a heavy black turtleneck, a short charcoal skirt, ripped white tights, and red Converse high-tops with rhinestones glued to the toes. “Are you going to put the pedal to the metal or are we just going to sit here?” she said.

“You can get out if you’re going to be rude.”

“I’m so sorry. Will you kindly depress the accelerator and steer your expensive sports car onto the road?”

“I rented this,” Elise said, wishing she hadn’t stopped. “It was all they had left.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“I didn’t have to pick you up, you know. I could have just ignored you.”

“Same here.”

Elise put the Mustang in gear and lurched back onto the Thruway.

*

The girl said her name was Konstance with a “K” and that she was going to Buffalo to see her boyfriend, whom she’d met online. It would be their first time meeting in person. He was twice her age and had a sailboat, a pinball machine, two Great Danes, and a macaw.

“And you trust this person?” Elise said.

“Totally,” Konstance said, staring out at the bright fall foliage. “We’ve been texting every day for three weeks.”

“That’s not very long.”

“We’ve even sexted.”

“I’m not sure how that works,” Elise said.

“No, you probably wouldn’t.”

“It sounds like this guy is pretty well-off. Why didn’t he just fly you up to Buffalo?”

“I can take care of myself,” Konstance said haughtily.

“He could have at least come down and picked you up.”

Konstance sighed. She folded a stick of gum into her mouth. “What’s with the flowers and ribbon?”

“I’m visiting the spot where my brother died,” Elise said. She explained about Eddie, who had worked at a bar a few miles from the prison, a rowdy place where a man had once been shot for pointing out the misspelling in another man’s tattoo. Eddie had worked there only two months, the last of a long string of jobs that included butcher, limo driver, cook, stagehand, arborist, janitor, and, very briefly, crossing guard. He had been driving home from the bar the night of the accident. “Alcohol wasn’t involved,” Elise said. “He’d quit drinking years ago. There were no skid marks, so he probably fell asleep.”

“Or he pulled a Kurt Cobain.”

“Kurt Cobain shot himself.”

Konstance snapped her gum. “Was your brother depressed?”

“I’m not sure. But depression runs in our family.”

“Oh, great. You can just let me out right here.”

“Don’t worry,” Elise said with a laugh. “I’m only mildly depressed.”

“Did you say you were a professor?”

“I’m just an adjunct instructor.”

“Which means what?”

“It’s kind of like being a tick on a dog,” Elise said. “You hold on until someone plucks you off.”

“I would only teach if I could pack,” Konstance said.

“That’s not unreasonable.” Elise veered into the right lane. “I’d like to get something to eat. Is that okay with you?”

“As long as you don’t eat meat.”

“I’ll eat whatever I want.”

Konstance yawned. “I convinced my boyfriend to become a vegetarian,” she said. “He still needs a big fat steak once in a while, but he understands the repercussions. He’s no dummy.”

Elise took the exit and followed the service road to the diner she stopped at every year. It had been there for decades and changed hands many times while the food remained stubbornly unexceptional. Now it was called the Surfcaster despite being a hundred miles from the ocean. She nosed the Mustang into a space and before she’d turned off the engine Konstance was out the door and bounding for the entrance in her sparkly sneakers. She imagined herself abandoning the girl here and then seeing her again at the next rest area, like in an episode of The Twilight Zone. She locked the car and went into the diner.

Seated in a booth by the door, they ordered a late breakfast. Fishing nets, boat bumpers, lanyards and life rings festooned the clamorous room. The stuffed buck’s head over the fireplace had been replaced by a gigantic oil painting of a whaling ship, reminding Elise of a paper she’d received in which the student had written about his trip to Antigua instead of discussing the lee shore in Moby Dick. “Articulate and engaging if somewhat off-topic,” she’d written in her comments.

“My dad used to make these,” Konstance said, buttering her silver dollar pancakes. Her top tooth was chipped, and in the diner’s sharp light her skin was almost translucently pale. “He called them little flippers. ‘I’m gonna fix us up some little flippers.’”

“And where is he? Your dad.”

“Good question.”

Elise shook some salt onto her eggs. “Is your mother around?”

“She lives with her boyfriend on Staten Island. He’s an entomologist. That means he studies bugs.”

“I know what it means.”

“If I have to hear about the tube-tailed thrip one more time I’m going to murder him.”

“The tube-tailed thrip,” Elise said.

“Larger than most thrips, members of this family have long tubular abdomens with pointed ends,” Konstance said with mock authority.

A family entered the diner, sending a gust of frigid air into the booth. Elise zipped her jacket. “So are you going to live with this boyfriend of yours?” she asked.

“He doesn’t want to live together.”

“Does he expect you to hitchhike up to Buffalo every weekend to see him?”

“Of course not.”

“What if he’s not there? What if he doesn’t even exist?”

Konstance stuffed an entire pancake into her mouth. “Your cynicism is kind of annoying,” she managed.

“I’m being realistic.”

“You’re just depressed. Maybe you should see a shrink.”

“I already have,” Elise said.

“Are you on meds?”

“Not at the moment.”

“One of my friends is taking an SSRI,” Konstance said after a gulp of her orange juice. “It’s wrecking her sex life. She said her vagina is as dead as a canned ham.”

“That’s quite a simile.”

“I think you mean metaphor,” Konstance said.

“If you say her vagina is a canned ham, that would be a metaphor. Using one object in place of another to denote a similarity. Similes use as or like.”

Another chilled gust swept into the booth. The server came by with the check.

“Can you pay for me?” Konstance said. Her chapped lips glistened with syrup. “I’m a little short on cash.”

Elise smiled, unamused. She plucked a napkin from the dispenser and handed it to the girl. “Wipe your mouth,” she said.

*

They drove awhile in silence. Konstance was texting with her boyfriend. Elise suspected he was a scammer or possibly a psychopath. Though the girl grated on her, she didn’t want her to wind up in pieces in a dumpster somewhere. After her business at the tree she would drive Konstance to Buffalo herself. She would meet this person and get a reading on him. This would mean spending the whole day on the road, but what else did she have to do? Perhaps the three of them could visit Niagara Falls together, something she hadn’t done since she was little. She had a vague memory of playing Ping-Pong with Eddie in a motel by the border and two older kids heckling them in French.

“That prick,” Konstance said. “That piece of shit bastard.” She shoved her phone into her expensive bag and threw her head back against the seat. “I can’t believe this.”

“What’s wrong?”

“He broke up with me.”

“Just now?”

“He said he needs his space.”

“Oh, honey, I’m sorry,” Elise said. “What are you going to do?”

“I have no idea.”

“Well, to be honest, it’s probably for the best. I don’t see how the relationship could have worked.”

“We were going to christen his satin sheets.”

“Yes, this definitely is for the best,” Elise said.

Konstance retrieved her phone and seeing no new texts stuffed it back in her bag and groaned. Then she started to cry. It sounded almost like laughter, high and stammering. She buried her face in her thin hands. Elise went to pat her on the leg and thought better of it and turned on the radio instead. She found a station she liked and accelerated rapidly to pass an old pickup truck loaded down with shabby furniture. She was beginning to appreciate the Mustang’s muscle, its thunder and thrust.

“Are you trying to kill us?” Konstance sniffled. “Turn this shit off.”

The song was “Don’t You (Forget About Me),” a massive hit when Elise was in high school. She’d been a smart, quiet girl with braces and a cranberry birthmark on her stomach that she abhorred. She’d since had the birthmark removed. She couldn’t remember who sang the song.

“This was the soundtrack to my youth,” she said.

Konstance wiped her eyes. “I’m glad I wasn’t alive back then.”

Elise shut off the music. “Okay, listen,” she said. “Don’t worry about getting home. I’ll take you. You can help me honor my brother and then we’ll head back to the city. How does that sound?” She looked at the girl, who was biting at a hangnail, her wan cheeks streaked with tears.

“Whatever,” Konstance said.

*

Twenty minutes later they left the Thruway and passed through a college town that bordered a muddy river. They crossed a bridge and descended into a sunlit valley checkered with farms and vineyards. Konstance had fallen asleep. Elise noticed a crumb in the girl’s hair and gingerly removed it. She was starting to feel an odd attachment to the girl. Should she invite her home for dinner? She enjoyed sharing a meal with someone and it had been quite some time since she’d done that.

“Where the hell are we?” Konstance said, sitting up and squinting out the window.

“We’re almost there.”

“I dreamed you were trying to kidnap me, so I stabbed you with my knife.”

“You have a knife?”

Konstance produced a steel-handled butterfly knife that she flicked open with a flourish and waved at Elise.

“Oh, hey, okay,” Elise said. “You can put that away now.”

“I can be dangerous.”

“Why would you want to be?”

“Take me to Buffalo,” Konstance said. She pointed the knife at Elise’s throat.

“There’s no one there for you. You’d be wasting your time.”

“Harvey’s there. And when I find him, he’s going to be sorry.”

Elise couldn’t help laughing. “That’s his name?”

“You’re unbalanced,” Konstance said.

“I’m not driving you to Buffalo. Stop threatening me. All I’ve been is nice to you.”

“You did buy me breakfast,” Konstance said. She folded the knife and put it away.

“Thank you,” Elise said.

A sign for the prison, pocked with bullet holes, flew by.

“So are we really doing this?” Konstance said. “Tying a stupid ribbon around a tree?”

“It’s not stupid. It’s to remember my brother.”

“The question is, does he remember you?”

“I hope so. That would be nice.”

Konstance chuckled.

“Let’s not talk right now,” Elise said as the prison came into view. The sight of it always put a heaviness in her chest, as if she were driving to her own execution. Then beyond the towers and parapets and coils of razor wire she would see the field, the oak tree rising from one debris-strewn corner, huge, soaring, ablaze with color, and a hopeful feeling would sweep over her, a calming sense of purpose. After cleaning up around the base of the tree she would unspool a fresh length of ribbon and tie it around the gouged trunk in a wide neat bow. She would have to hug the tree to get the ribbon around it. It felt good to do this. She liked to imagine the tree hugging her back.

Only where was it?

For a hazy moment Elise thought she’d made a wrong turn somewhere. But there was the curve in the road and there was the rough slope leading down to the field. The field, however, was different, she noticed as she pulled cautiously to the shoulder. Gone were the snarls of yellow grass strewn with car parts, tires, and broken glass. It was all dark clean soil now, ploughed and furrowed. A big yellow earth mover sat in the distance. Close to where the tree had stood a small red sign was planted in the ground, though Elise couldn’t see what it said. She shut down the Mustang. It was four in the afternoon.

“My, my, my,” Konstance said drolly.

“This isn’t funny,” Elise said.

“I didn’t say it was.” The girl opened the door and hopped out and ran down to the field, fluttering her arms like a child or a drunk person.

The engine ticked and whispered. The asters gave off their balmy scent. After a few moments Elise got out of the car.

Konstance was kicking at the furrows, destroying their pleated symmetry. There was no evidence of the tree—no stump, no sawdust, no twigs or acorns, not even a single leaf. The sign said MAKE CRIME ILLEGAL AGAIN, DICK BIRDCAKE FOR SHERIFF.

Elise stood at the spot where she thought the oak had been. She could see her breath in the loam-smelling air. She turned to the sun, letting its faint warmth cup her face, and closed her eyes, waiting to feel something. She didn’t feel anything. Just tired.

“So what’s the deal?” Konstance said.

“I just want to stand here a minute.”

“Maybe they’re putting in a swimming pool for the prisoners. Or a planetarium. Your tax dollars at work.”

Elise imagined the Cold Cut Killer peering up at the Big Dipper with his fellow inmates. Her mouth was dry. Her shoes were speckled with dirt.

“Let’s go bowling,” Konstance said.

“Bowling?”

“I bet I can beat you.”

“I haven’t bowled in years,” Elise said.

“It’ll be therapeutic. You need it, believe me.”

“Oh, do I?”

“There must be a bowling alley around here somewhere.”

“I suppose I’ll have to pay for you,” Elise said.

“I’m good for it,” said Konstance.

When they were back in the car, Konstance asked Elise to put the top down. “Why drive a convertible if you can’t feel the wind in your hair?” she said.

“It’s too cold.”

The girl pulled from her bag a beige wool scarf. “Wear this.”

Elise wrapped the scarf around her neck. It smelled of spearmint and stale sweat. She started the engine and lowered the windows. Then she pressed the switch to retract the top and it ran back over their heads with a whir and folded itself into place behind the back seat.

“There’s a bowling alley eighteen miles from here,” Konstance said, reading the map on her phone.

“That’s kind of far.”

“Take us twenty minutes. Just keep going straight.”

Elise thought the girl might hold her at knifepoint again but this didn’t happen and she pulled out onto the road, the late sun spilling into the open car. As they picked up speed Konstance’s sign blew from the back seat and went cartwheeling down the center line. Elise turned on the heater full blast. Konstance took a video of the landscape shooting by. Then she aimed her phone at Elise, who could indeed feel the wind in her hair, brisk, invigorating. She leaned back, steering with one hand, while the heat warmed her legs and the girl held the camera on her and the road snaked and climbed under the dimming blue sky.

Richard Goodwin lives and writes in Vancouver, Washington. His short fiction has appeared in the Adirondack Review, Typishly, X-R-A-Y, and elsewhere.

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