Carpenter

Carpenter sits down a county road southeast of Cheyenne, close enough to the Colorado line that your phone occasionally pretends you have moved states. It is a hamlet in the literal sense: a post office, a few ranches, and the kind of quiet that registers as a vital sign. Dating here is mostly the dating you brought with you; the local pool is small, candid, and largely spoken for. The honest play is to treat Carpenter as the place you drive home to, and Cheyenne, twenty-odd minutes northwest, as the place you actually meet anyone new.