Under the Stars and Stripes (Under Him)

“Well, you’re the one walking the streets of Los Angeles with pictures of her. Given the context, I figure it’s safe to say she’s missing. And no one would be stupid enough to kidnap a girl as beautiful as her in broad daylight. Too many people would notice a face like that absent from anywhere she’s supposed to be.”

She then adds, “So, it has to be that she ran away. Give me some credit. I’m old, not stupid.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell the lady. “I’m just upset.”

“I can see why. She’s lovely. I hope find her soon.”

I try to fake a grateful smile before I walk away, but just end up nodding instead before I carry on because the muscles in my face are refusing to even try smiling.

And just as I’m about to ask a person a few feet away, I hear her again behind me.

“It’s in her eyes, too,” she says, as she hobbles up toward me and points at Brittany’s eyes in that photo of her peeking behind the curtain at the studio.

“What is?” I ask.

“The desire to run,” the old woman says. “There’s a softening sadness all over her face. But her eyes, you see, the way she’s looking behind that curtain, there’s just something in all of that that makes it plainly obvious that she’s looking for an escape anywhere she can. But that doesn’t mean she can’t be found, if someone loves her enough to look for her.”

A chill runs down my neck.

“Thank you,” I tell her. “I appreciate you saying that.”

“You’re welcome,” she replies. “And I mean it… I really do hope you find her.”

Then she pulls on the leash and says to her dog, “C’mon, Toto.”

“Whoa,” I say, louder than I mean to.

The old lady looks at me and says, “Whoa what?!”

I don’t really know how to answer this because on the one hand I want to believe it’s no coincidence that her dog is named Toto while I’m holding the very picture I compared to The Wizard of Oz, but on the other, I know that some coincidences are just that— illusory correlations and nothing more.

I stare at the photo in my hands, trying to decide which of those two to hold it in so that I can then figure out where to go next to look.

The old woman follows my gaze back down to the photo again and kind of chuckles.

“What?” I ask.

“Nothing. But I can see why you reacted to my dog’s name now,” she says. “She just… she kind of looks like a young Judy Garland here. You know in that scene where she pulls back the curtain at the end and sees who the Wizard really is?”

And suddenly my face is smiling without having to try.

“That’s exactly what I told her when I took this photo and showed it to her.”

“No way?” she asks, more than says. “Well, who knows? Maybe she clicked her heels three times and ended up back at home.”

“Omigod…” I say, the moment that she says this. “I can’t believe I haven’t thought of that.”

“She went missing today and the first place you checked wasn’t at home?”

“Well… I mean…”

Great.

I’ve gone from having my spirits lifted by this old crone to feeling like she thinks I’m a complete idiot.

That tracks, I guess.

“Well, don’t just stand there with your jaw on the ground! Go home, you big oaf!” And the last I hear of her is when she starts telling her dog, “Jesus, if that’s his Dorothy, then that must make him the brainless Scarecrow.”

I’m not even offended.

I just laugh a little and run as fast as I can toward my car parked back at the studio.

* * *

When I finally arrive home about half an hour later, the sun has set but the darkness that feels like it’s been suffocating me all throughout the day since Brittany left actually still lingers.

I take to foot to run up the rounded staircase that leads to the front door from the carport beneath the house, and I say a silent prayer of thanks to whatever higher power blessed me with what was clearly not a coincidental run in with the old woman… and her little dog, too.

“You’re here,” I pant out when I reach the top of stairs and find Brittany sitting there alone and looking chilly.

“Here,” I say, taking off a cardigan I’ve been wearing.

She stands up and wraps it around herself, then takes one step down so that she’s still two steps up from me, but at least at my eye level.

“I’m sorry I ran,” she says.

“You have nothing to be sorry for,” I tell her. “I can’t imagine what your brain was going through in that moment. And honestly… that’s probably the most literal fight or flight situation I’ve ever witnessed in person. I will never again doubt the science behind that theory.”