By Jonathon Ferrini
My flight from JFK landed in Albuquerque well after dark, just in time to learn that the last connection to Phoenix had been canceled. Waiting until morning wasn’t an option because my daughter was scheduled for cancer surgery, and after missing the chance to say goodbye to my dying wife years earlier while chasing another business deal halfway around the world, I wouldn’t fail my daughter again.
I rented a car and headed into the night, intending to follow Interstate 40 West before turning south toward Scottsdale. But somewhere beyond Albuquerque, with fatigue settling in and my mind replaying old regrets instead of reading highway signs, I drifted onto a lonely state road with a single faded white line guiding me into a jigsaw puzzle of regret, anguish, fear, and several near bouts of dozing off. White lines and the pitch-black desert sky suggest a road is just a road, but where it leads you is a state of mind and the white line offers no guarantee of what lies ahead.
By the time the sun was climbing over the high desert, the interstate had vanished behind me. The landscape had grown quiet and unhurried, and the weathered sign welcoming me to an indiscernible town whose name was erased by decades of winds and rains. I named the town “Nowhere New Mexico” which I would discover seemed less like a wrong turn than an invitation into a place untouched by deadlines, airports, and the relentless pursuit of tomorrow. As it turns out, I learned some folks look at today and make it become magic even in the simplest of ways.
I was tired and hungry and missed the off-ramps taking me to fast food, hotels, and all the conveniences of modern life. I needed food, rest, and an opportunity to think about the long trip home. I regretted the call to my wife’s sister notifying her I’d be late, but it would wait until I could gather my thoughts.
There was an old gas station with two rusted pumps standing out front like museum pieces. An automobile repair shop with a faded sign that read MARTINEZ GARAGE with a 50-foot-tall pole sign with a Native American Chief in ceremonial headgear faded but still stared out over the land. In the center of town, I saw the “Wayward Hotel, Rooming House, and Restaurant”, and across the street was a dilapidated old metal warehouse with a crow painted on the side.
The streets were paved, but potholes interrupted the blacktop every few yards. You could almost imagine that beneath it all was the old dirt road where horses once galloped and shootouts occurred after drunken brawls inside the hotel bar. It felt like an Old West town that had simply decided to keep going. The only thing missing was the horses.
Then I saw the pharmacy,
“Saf-T Pharmacy & Soda Fountain”
I stopped and parked because of the soda fountain. You can’t find them anymore and I couldn’t resist the urge to relive the experience of a chocolate shake from a cold metal colander. I looked through the front window, six stools lined up at an old counter. The red vinyl was cracked. The chrome had dulled. I doubted it had served a proper milkshake in years.
A little bell jingled when I walked inside. The first thing I noticed was that two young women were standing behind the counter dressed for Halloween. One wore a black witch’s hat and a purple cape. She had long dark hair and warm brown skin. The other had red hair, freckles, and silver fairy wings that glittered whenever she moved. For a moment, I recalled holding my daughter’s hand as we went door to door on Halloween and in a split second, she grew up and didn’t need my hand.
The store was empty. I felt strangely at peace and smiled. “Do you still make chocolate shakes?”
The two of them looked at each other.
“The soda fountain’s closed,” the witch said.
The fairy shrugged. “Oh, who cares? We’ll make one.”
They disappeared behind the counter. The old mixing machine groaned to life. Then came the delicious ingredients: ice cream, milk, chocolate syrup, and fresh whipped cream and a maraschino cherry from a nearby jar to top it off.
They laughed quietly as they worked, neither one giving instructions, each one knowing exactly what the other was about to do but I was living my childhood again, a simpler time, a time of endless days and no responsibilities.
Finally, the fairy placed the shake in front of me. I took a sip.
“It tastes like 1959.”
They didn’t get the joke but why should they? They are living their own history. I looked around the store.
“Where’s the pharmacist?”
The fairy smiled. “She doesn’t work on Wednesdays.”
I looked back at the shelves. There were bottles of aspirin and a few prescriptions waiting to be picked but there were also tools, nails, garden gloves, wind chimes, handmade pottery, old books, locally painted pictures of the desert, candles, kitchen towels, greeting cards, and little carved wooden animals.
The witch caught me looking.
“We’ve got a little bit of everything.
“If people need something, we try to have it.”
The old wooden floor creaked as an elderly man walked in and bought a newspaper and a package of screws. After he left, a woman came through the front door carrying a broken lamp.
The fairy looked it over like it was a precious heirloom and assured the woman, “Mr. Ortega will probably stop by around three. He can fix it.”
“You both look darling in your Halloween costumes but it’s only springtime.”
“We don’t need a holiday to dress up and have fun together.”
A little boy came in and bought a comic book and a piece of peppermint candy. “Take an extra at no charge, dear.”
“Gee, thank you, Miss.”
The place wasn’t really a pharmacy. It was whatever somebody needed that day. The ceilings were high, and an old fan turned slowly overhead squeaking to some old beat or rhythm it recalled from decades ago. The wooden floor had been worn smooth by a hundred years of footsteps. I would have sworn that nobody had renovated that building in a century. It was authentic. It wasn’t pretending to be old like so many commercial replications seen today. It had simply survived.
“Are you going to a party, ladies?”
“No.”
“A dance?”
“No.”
“Then why the costumes?”
“We just decided to dress up today.”
“Why are you doing what you’re doing, Sir?”
“I missed a flight and decided to drive home to Scottsdale and got turned around and ended up here.”
The fairy smiled. “We have many strangers who seem to stray off the Interstate and find their way here. They all seem to carry a burden of some type. Some talk, others don’t. Most of the time they leave happier then when they arrived. We never see them again. How are you doin’ Mister?”
“Thanks for asking but I won’t spoil your Wednesday with my burdens. Did you both grow up in this small town?”
“Yep. Same elementary school, same little high school, summer jobs together, and now the pharmacy.”
“You never left?”
The fairy shook her head. “No.”
The witch looked down at the old milkshake mixer. “Not yet.”
I wasn’t sure what that meant. I almost asked about husbands, boyfriends, and children but it struck me it didn’t really matter because these two young ladies were at peace. Instead, I asked, “Is there much to do around here?”
The fairy looked out the window. “We watch storms.”
The witch smiled. “And people driving through in a hurry.”
I found myself wondering what it was like to spend your whole life in one little town. I wondered if they ever dreamed about bigger places; the ocean, and cities full of strangers. I wondered if they would ever leave and then another thought came to me. “What would happen if one of you left?”
Neither answered. The fairy folded one of her wings. The witch looked out the front window.
The fairy smiled. “I guess the other one would have to learn how to make milkshakes.”
The witch smiled back. “It wouldn’t taste as good.”
They laughed like happy young women with the hearts of children still pulsating inside them. I realised I had been looking at them the wrong way. I had assumed that because they stayed, they must be lonely, yet they did not seem lonely at all. They weren’t sisters as far as I could tell and didn’t signal, they were a couple. There was simply a bond between them that had been built one ordinary day at a time.
I had a revelation that perhaps in a little town, you discover that friendship just happens. Possibly, they worked there because the store itself was the one place where the whole town came together because the place had everything including a hundred years of memories and perhaps that was enough.
I finished my shake. They charged me three dollars. I left twenty. The fairy tried to hand me the change, but I stopped her, “Keep the change. Use it for more costumes and giving an old man a taste of the past which can’t be purchased anywhere for any price.”
I walked outside and the bell above the door rang as if saying, “Goodbye and thanks for stopping by.”
I sat inside my car and was ready to make the phone call to the hospital and found no cellular service. The bell above the door rang with a sense of urgency when I asked if there was a pay phone. “No cell service and no pay phone, Mister.”
“I have to make an emergency call to the hospital.”
“You’re welcome to go behind the pharmacist’s counter and use her phone in the office.”
My daughter was already in surgery and the prognosis was uncertain. My gut was tied in knots, and I feared another lost loved one with daddy absent.
I emerged from behind the pharmacy and back into the store witnessing two beautiful young women with true empathy, love, and kindness in their eyes. I teared up.
“It’s been one hell of a night and trip with hours to go. Despite the sorrow in my heart, you both brought this old man some happiness.”
The witch said, “You’re not the first one to use that phone in an emergency and won’t be the last. We’re happy you were able to make your call and hope it all works out for you.”
“From your mouth to God’s ears, ladies.”
“Maybe not ‘God’ but a good witch and fairy, Mister.”
The old hotel cast a long shadow across the street. The garage looked as though it had been waiting for someone for fifty years. The gas station pumps stood quietly in the afternoon sun. The Chief kept staring like he was waiting for the cavalry.
I climbed into my car but before I started the engine, I looked back through the pharmacy window. The fairy was pretending to cast a spell with a milkshake spoon. The witch was stirring an imaginary cauldron.
I wish I could have told the pharmacist they cast a spell of resilience and renewed energy inside me. The farther I drove, the more I thought about them. At first, I wondered whether they would ever leave that little New Mexico town. Then I realised it wasn’t really my business. People who travel too much have a habit of believing that happiness is always somewhere else. Maybe it isn’t?
I had spent my life travelling the world for business and valuing corporate opportunities. That afternoon, I learned that some places cannot be measured that way. The little store wasn’t valuable because of the land beneath it. It was valuable because it had become one place where everybody could go.
If you needed medicine, a hammer, comic book, or a birthday card, it was there, and, if you needed a chocolate milkshake from a vintage soda fountain to rekindle something lost inside you forever, two girls dressed as a witch and a fairy would probably smile and say, “We’ll make one.”
And as I drove out across the New Mexico desert, I wasn’t sad for them. I was happy because in a world where so many people spend their lives searching for someone who understands them, those two girls had already found each other and were content.
Sometimes they watched storms.
Sometimes they meet strangers passing through and cast spells of human understanding and kindness.
And just for the hell of it on an ordinary Wednesday, they put on fairy wings and a witch’s hat, not because they had somewhere to go, but because they already had somewhere to belong.
I thought about two small town girls who decided that an ordinary Wednesday deserved a little magic which consoled a father as he made it to the hospital and found his loving daughter recuperating from successful surgery. I held her hand and whispered, “Do you remember when you were little and daddy took you house to house on Halloween?”
“I dreamed about that, daddy. I always dressed as a nice witch or a fairy.”
Jonathan Ferrini is the author of nearly 100 short fiction stories, poems, and screenplays. A partial collection of his short fiction may be found inside “Hearts Without Sleeves-Twenty Three Stories” available at Amazon. Jonathan is the writer/host of the Razor’s Ink Podcast nearing 90 weekly episodes where he discusses film, television, and music. Jonathan received his MFA in motion picture and television production from UCLA and is a candidate for the undergraduate diploma in Creative Writing at Oxford University.
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