There's a small town in the Midwest with a picture-perfect downtown Square, a beautiful old courthouse, bustling with residents and tourists -- a town featured in a movie you've all seen. Many, many years ago the town and its residents were captured forever in a film starring an attractive couple, a snowstorm and a rodent. Years later the town still has an annual celebration of that movie.
This is the town where Liza grew up and still lives. Her life is very similar to that same movie. A 'good girl' as the saying goes, married to her childhood sweetheart, she lives near the house she grew up in, where her parents still live, with her devoted spouse and several sweet children. She wakes up every morning, feeds the children, the dog, kisses the husband goodbye as he heads off to the same job he's always had, takes the sweet children to school, putters around the house a bit and puts in 3 or 4 hours at her 'job'. She's bored out of her fucking mind and has lately grown very impatient with her same old-same old life.
Until she meets Chris, that is.
To counter-act her boring life, Liza decides to take up running at night, when her husband is home from his job, her sweet children are asleep and she and the dog head out, pounding out the miles on her new pair of Asics. Liza ran track in high school, but this is different, she varies the 8-mile loop around town every night (can't be too careful these days, even in a small Midwestern town), but to cool down, she walks the four blocks of the bucolic Square before heading the next few blocks home.
So, one boring yet beautiful evening, around 10pm, the sun long set and the spring air with a bit of a chill yet, she's walking on the South block of the Square when she hears, "Hey there, does your dog bite?"
Liza looks over at the man sitting on a park bench, she's seen him before, he's out there often enough, but he's never spoken to her before.
"All dogs bite, given the right circumstances." She answers, fingering the small scar on her left cheek, a gift from a neighbor's puppy back when she was 6. It was a minor one, not even requiring stitches, but a reminder that all animals are unpredictable. "She's pretty agreeable though, so maybe she won't bite you, tonight." She instructs the German Shepherd to sit and the man reaches out to pat her flank.
"I'm Chris, by the way." He holds out his hand to Liza, and she automatically shakes it, belatedly thinking that he's a Stranger, thus full of Danger. "I'm a photographer, my office is up there." He gestures to one of the old buildings that line the Square.
"Nice to meet you Chris. See you around." Liza gathers the dog and begins to move down the sidewalk, back towards the safety of home.
"No time to chat tonight?" Chris sprawls on the bench, in that position known to all men; legs splayed, arms draped across the back of the bench, casual, yet somehow deliberate. "It's such a nice night after all the crummy weather we've had lately. Pull up a chair and stay a while."
"Sorry, places to be, things to do." Liza answers, "Maybe another night." She moves on, thrilled at the benign encounter, and somehow fucking turned on by being addressed by this attractive Stranger. He's not her 'type', her type these days being the younger guys she encounters at work, but he's cute in a dad sort of way.
Because of course, he's a dad. They all are. Bored dads, just as she's a bored mom. Bored is another word for 'looking for adventure' and she's not quite sure she's ready for whatever adventure he's offering. She's also sure he'll be there another night, in the future, when she's more interested in the adventure he has in mind.
If she only knew.....
Fast forward several months, suddenly the year is half over, it's late July and the night air is now thick with Midwestern humidity. Liza is leaving the dog at home, in the comfort of the air conditioning that her husband requires, and thus she is now free of encumbrance. She varies her route even more and is grateful for the for streetlights around the Square. As she walks past the bank, she looks up to see the sign telling her that it's still 80 degrees at 10pm. Her white-blonde hair is up in a long ponytail down her back, her wet shorts and tank stick to her sweaty skin in a most uncomfortable way. She's yanking at the top, pulling it away from her sports bra when she hears, "Now that's an interesting picture."
It's Chris, on his bench outside his studio, apparently enjoying the hot summer air. Or more likely, lying in wait for her. "Now that's a creepy thing to say." She counters him, slowing but not stopping, her mother's long-ago admonishments against Strangers still echoing in her ears. Arguing with her own need to live Dangerously for once in her sorry, boring life. 'That's the kind of shit that gets you killed' her brain adds, for good measure.
"I'm not a creep, I'm a member of the Chamber!" He laughs, a solid, somehow comforting noise in the silence of the street. It's not really silent, there are people walking from the various restaurants to their cars, others parking cars and heading to the bar on the corner from where the bench is. It just seems that time has slowed, the noise has abated, and she finds herself standing in front of him, too close for her mother's comfort but in a way that seems just right for Liza.
Chris truly is cute in that dad kind of way, sweaty dark hair curling across his forehead, visible muscles bunched in his arms as he stretches under her gaze. Dark hair on his legs visible under the dad shorts he wears, flip flops on his feet. "Do I see flip flops on your feet?" Liza asks incredulously, "Are we at the fucking beach or something?"
"Nah," he laughs as he answers her, "They're comfy on a hot night like this, and it's not like I have to walk far." Again, he gestures at the building just a few steps away, where the name on the door affirms that he really is Chris, a photographer.
"Do you live there or just work there?" She asks, not caring that it's a nosy thing to ask a Stranger. But the answer is important, in a Dangerous way.
"Work." He answers shortly, then continues, "Photo studio, but there's a kitchen and bathroom, couch, home away from home in a way. It's all mine, no wife or kids ever at night. No clients this late either. Maybe you should come up and see the really neat picture of a barn I found out on Bull Valley road today." His answer is leading, but factual and Liza feels a VERY Dangerous thrill run through her body. She's been a faithful wife to her faithful husband, but she also fell for the 'get married a virgin' trope that her lying church told her as a naive child. She now knows she was foolish for believing it, given her siblings fucked their way through HS and college....and yet the guilt for even flirting with Chris is strong tonight. 'I'm not ready', she thinks. 'Not yet.'
"Cool." She answers, "I'd like that, but another time, thanks." She steps back and begins to run, away from Chris, away from the Danger, away from her own self. It's a comfortable feeling, she's been running her whole life from anything that would require stepping off the path of straight and narrow, blind obedience to the rigid belief system she grew up learning.
Another month passes, she avoids the Square for her cooldown walk, instead using the streets behind and around it. She's joined an online chat site, and finds herself chatting with other moms who feel as she does, who open her mind away from the rigidity she's always known. Plenty of men too, eager to seduce her with their words into meeting them in dark alleys of true Danger. She never left town for college, instead attending the local Community College, and with never having moved away as her siblings did, she's still cossetted by the confines of small-town thinking and living. To hear stories of 'real life' from others, how narrow her life really has been, has her mind fired up with all the 'good things' she's missed out by marrying young and virginal..still having dinner with her parents or in-laws every Sunday, having boring, vanilla sex with her also-virgin husband. Flirting aimlessly with the cute guys at work, with no intentions of ever moving past that.
Suddenly the world seems a wide-open adventure just waiting for her to explore.
It's no coincidence that the next night she deliberately takes the path that leads her to Chris's bench. Anticipation makes her run shorter, skipping streets, her heart racing as she approaches the Square.
Of course, he's sitting there, legs spread, advertising himself, as she thinks of it. He's chatting with another man, and it's someone she knows -- her Junior year Calc instructor, who happens to be friends with her mother. "Damnit." She mutters, ducking her shoulders, turning her head away as she picks back up to a jog, hoping to move silently past. Just another jogger enjoying the evening.
That doesn't happen, as Chris's sharp eyes are obviously looking for her. He raises his voice and says, "Hey girl jogger without her dog! How's it going?" Liza's instructor turns to see who Chris is hailing and he says loudly, "Liza, Liza Thompson is that you?"
"Shit, shit, shit." She mutters again, turning her head and waving, "Hi Mr. Smith how's it going?"
Liza picks up her pace and sprints to the end of the block. "Wind sprints, yep, gotta do more of those things." She tells herself as she gasps a bit, inside her head trying to reconcile her planned encounter with Chris, but instead being rebuffed by running (almost literally) into someone with whom she is well-acquainted. Small town life: fuck your neighbor on Tuesday, it's the hot topic at church on Sunday and posted on the town's "What's New About Town" on Monday.
It only occurs to her later, after her shower when she's lying in bed next to her snoring husband that Mr. Smith called her out by name, and now Chris knows exactly who she is. He can look for her online presence and even find her house. That is some bad news right there, but she falls asleep hoping he's not a stalker...
Several weeks pass and Liza worries back and forth over continuing the developing flirtation with Chris. Instructor Smith is not in her social circle and he's hardly likely to mention to her parents over a beer that he saw Liza running on the Square -- everyone knows she does. Stopping to talk to Chris would hardly be out of the ordinary, not a night goes by that she doesn't see someone she knows. And why wouldn't she know Chris? His kid could even be in her Girl Scout troop since she's never met more than one or two of the dads in person.
Convincing herself that it's still at a benign point and that she can avoid him on his bench any time she wants, as she's done it off and on for months now, that night she puts on some new stretchy jogging shorts she picked up the previous week, one of her non-torn sports bras and a loose tank. Her silky blonde hair in its normal ponytail and a quick swipe of waterproof mascara, she bids her husband goodnight (an early riser, he's rarely awake when she gets home and being a deep sleeper, never notices when she gets home) and heads out the door. Guilt for even THINKING about going to see the photos in Chris's studio plagues her for the first few miles. Once she reaches her perfect rhythm, she feels the endorphins spread their good will throughout her body and by the time she hits the Square, she's grinning and totally prepared to banter with Chris.
