The Ashworth Run

The Cadillac sputtered on Route 9, steam curling from its hood like a surrender flag. Diana Ashworth kicked the tire out of habit and immediately regretted it. Her foot hurt, the tire was fine, and her temper was about to do something irreversible to the vehicle.

Elijah Cross stood at the edge of the road, arms crossed over a t-shirt that had been white at some point in its lifecycle. He was leaning against her car as though he owned it, which was ironic, because he definitely did not own the car, or the road, or the small town of Woodstock that they had arrived in somewhere between three and four o'clock that afternoon.

"You need a wrench," he said.

"I need a miracle," Diana replied. "But a wrench would be acceptable."

He pushed off the car and walked around to the front, opening the hood with a familiarity that told her he did this kind of thing regularly. Not just this car—every car that broke down somewhere between nowhere and nowhere else.

While he worked, Diana stood with her arms crossed and tried to look like a person who did not sweat. She had dressed for a road trip that involved jazz clubs and gin, not a mechanical breakdown in the middle of Vermont. Her white dress was already compromised. Her cigarette was already smoking. Her mood was entirely uncompromised.

"You play piano?" she asked, because silence felt like a challenge she needed to accept.

Elijah did not look up. "Sometimes."

"When?"

"When the doors are open and the people inside don't care what I look like."

Diana took a long drag from her cigarette. "That's a very sad answer."

"It's a very honest one."

He closed the hood with a satisfying thunk. The engine turned over on the second try. Diana felt a surge of satisfaction so disproportionate to the situation that it surprised her.

"Thank you," she said.

"You bought me a drink once," he said. "Consider us even."

She thought back, searching the fog of the past week. The speakeasy on 134th Street, the one behind the butcher shop that nobody knew about unless somebody told them. The table in the back where she had sat with a gin cocktail and watched a quiet Black man sit down at a battered upright piano and play something that made her want to apologize to everyone she had ever wronged.

She had bought him a drink. He had nodded and said thank you and played something that sounded like the inside of a church. She had forgotten his name then. He had remembered the drink.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, but it was not the uncomfortable silence of strangers. It was the comfortable silence of two people who had said what they needed to say and were saving the rest for later.

In Woodstock, they found a diner that served pie at midnight. Diana ordered cherry. Elijah ordered black coffee. They sat in a booth that had seen better decades and talked about nothing important—the weather, the car, the strange beauty of Vermont roads at dusk.

At midnight, Diana stood to leave. "You should come to the party tomorrow," she said. "There will be music."

"I know," Elijah said. "I'm playing."

Diana sat back down. "When did you become so good at everything?"

"When I realized being good was the only thing anyone could take away from me that they hadn't already."

The cherry pie arrived. Diana ate it slowly, savoring the sweetness because she knew, with the certainty of someone who had lived long enough to learn this lesson, that sweetness in this world was always temporary.

© 2026 - Authored by Z R ZHANG ( EL9507135 -- バスホートビス[⽱⽖⽱] 中国 n民 子 Номер паспорта  หมายเลขหนังสือเดินทาง   Passnummer   رقم جواز السفر CHN Passport)
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