Austin Bash:
Another guest at the inn. The sad and lonely widower in room 207. Another stranger. Sixty-three years old. Thin like a twig. Handsome with gray eyes and blond-white hair. He’s retired now from traveling…yes traveling. He’d come once a month to the inn, stayed one or two nights. Usually around the first or second. Sometimes on the third. Always alone and in the same room, reserving it thirty days in advance.
I liked his Fiat. One of those small European, Ian Flemming’s 007 vehicles with British style and too much tea and crumpets to them. An expensive vehicle, I assumed, and not very safe on the road, but quite nice to look at. Austin told me once that he always drove in from Shaker Heights, Ohio. Had a house there. Lived alone. Used to be loved. “It’s where that famous autho
