by Brian Hart
Then, as he did with dismal regularity, he thought of Karen Oronski. He took a moment away from the reality of the dreary kitchen and his jacked back and went through the work of piecing her together. Her face was there, her longish nose and her heavy lower lip, and he could feel the weight of her body in his arms, the feel and smell of her hair as he buried his face in her neck. It was like a drug to think about her. He held her at arm’s length and her smile came through her eyes too. He couldn’t remember what her laugh sounded like. He tried on a few but none of them fit. This just happened. He could remember it yesterday. He felt a hollow spot open up in his chest. The moan coming out of his mouth broke the spell. There were other kinds of storms, outside of rain and snow, thunder and lightning, and Roy knew enough to duck and cover when one like this came on. He put the dog in its crate and grabbed his board and his bus pass and hobbled out the door.
[18]
R<25
CA 96118
Roy woke on the couch to headlights spinning the shadows of the window frames onto the walls as someone pulled into the driveway. He sat up in the blue dark and turned off the TV with the remote. Karen wasn’t in the living room with him. He went to the kitchen. A car door opened and Roy watched as a man’s shadow passed through the headlights. It had to be Mace or one of Mace’s friends. Without any real conviction Roy decided he wouldn’t open the door. He retreated to the living room hoping maybe they hadn’t seen him in the kitchen. The knock was hard enough to rattle the glass.
“Who in the hell is that?” Karen asked from the bedroom.
“I don’t know. Mace wouldn’t knock, would he?”
“I’m hiding.”
“You call me a coward.”
She didn’t have time to answer.
“Karen,” Aaron Simmonds called between knocks. “Hey, Roy-O. Arroyo!” He rolled his r’s somewhat expertly. “You awake?”
Roy straightened his sweatshirt and walked to the door licking the dry from his lips. The door opened before he got there.
“You’re up,” Aaron said, and reached in and flicked on the kitchen lights. “Good. Mind if we come in? We brought you tacos and beer.”
“Hey thanks, Aaron. Wait, how many are there?”
“Just two, me and April, my wife. I’ll go grab her and the grub and shut the car off.” He turned as he was walking, spoke over his shoulder, “I don’t know why I left her in the car. Where else would you be?”
Roy held the door when they came back. He shook April’s hand but hardly looked at her. He wasn’t quite sure what this was yet.
Aaron put down his paper bag of food and a six-pack of Dos Equis on the table. Roy took the beer he was handed and April found a plate and spread out and introduced the assorted chicken and beef and veggie tacos for everybody to share.
“We wanted to make sure you had food at least,” Aaron said.
April was nodding along with her husband, smiling at Roy. “We felt bad,” she said. “You come home and your car breaks down. It’s awful.”
“Yeah, it is sad,” Roy said, but he wanted to say: This isn’t home. This will never be home. Roy picked up a beef taco in a corn tortilla and soaked it in hot sauce from a plastic cup and wolfed it down in three bites.
“Where’s Karen?” Aaron asked.
“She’s in the bathroom,” Roy said, opening a beer. “She’ll be out in a minute. Thanks again for the food.”
Aaron waved him off and April smiled and showed gapped front teeth, wide enough to stick a nickel in. Her hair was cut short and she wasn’t tall and her short hair made her seem even shorter and more perky. She had a physical tightness about her he recognized of the high school athlete—bump, set, spike it, that’s the way we like it—the dancer’s heel pivot, half-duckfooted. He imagined them, Aaron and April, quite the pair, jocko couple.
“You caught me taking a nap,” Roy said.
“Ask him,” April said. She had a beer now too but she wasn’t eating.
“Ask me what?” Roy couldn’t read their expressions. He didn’t know these people.
“We were in town having a few drinks.” Aaron said, making the drinking motion with his thumb and pinky sticking out. “The Kings lost.”
“Yeah, I watched the last few minutes.”
“Fuck those fucking idiots. Crumb-chasing fucktards, drive me insane. Anyway, I told April about you and Karen, that I saw you, and me and Karen went to school together and that we had this great talk, and April wanted to meet you guys, so we stopped by.”
“He didn’t think to get some food,” April said. “That was me.”
“She’s the brains,” Aaron said. He had on a leather jacket and greasy black jeans, logger boots. Used to be a cop and from now on he would look undercover.
“You wanna come to Reno with us?” April said.
“I was asking him,” Aaron said.
“Slower than your precious Kings getting to the point,” April said. “It’ll be fun.” Her eyes were slightly crossed, big and brown. Maybe they weren’t crossed, maybe they were just that big. She spun around and took in her surroundings. She grabbed Roy by the arm. “Can you see yourself here, like, living here?”
“I don’t know. We just got here.” He was close enough to smell the fruity smell of her shampoo. He grabbed a napkin and wiped the grease from his hand and the back of his wrist.
“Better figure it out, dummy.” She seemed surprised at the coldness of her words but she was having fun anyway. No one was going to stop her from having fun. She gave him a pinch that hurt and let him go. “Where is she anyway? Aaron wouldn’t shut up about her. He was starting to make me jealous.”
Aaron shrugged his shoulders and held out his hands, oh you got me. April smiled and then smiled bigger.
“She’ll be out in a sec,” Roy said. “Are you coming back tonight or staying over?”
“We’ll be back by morning,” Aaron said seriously. “Dawn’s crack, not a second later. Or sooner.”
“All right. Let’s go, then. I’ll see if Karen wants to come.”
“She has to,” Aaron said, meaning, if she isn’t going, neither are you.
“I’ll tell her you said so.”
Roy found Karen in the bathroom in her underwear, no bra, sitting on the counter next to the sink. She’d been clipping her toenails, the evidence in the basin.
“Did you hear them?”
“I sure did.”
“You wanna go?”
“No, I do not. I’ll come out and tell them as soon as I’m done here.”
“But I have a plan.”
“What plan?”
“It’s a genius plan.”
“Well, I love a man with a plan.” She hopped down and traced her fingers over his penis through his pants.
“Grab your bag,” Roy said.
“I got yours right here.” She cupped his balls and squeezed gently.
He leaned down and kissed her deep brown nipples, Spike Lee style, right, then left, Mookie. “Your backpack. I’ll carry my own balls tonight, thank you.”
She let go of him. “Have you noticed that I’m not mad at you anymore? Do you want to know why?”
“Because I’m wealthy and good-looking.”
“Because I love you.” She kissed him on the mouth and Roy savored the wet, minty cool. “Wait,” she said, “your plan includes coming back here, right?”
“Sure, but maybe not tonight.” He hadn’t lied to her for a while so he figured he’d earned one, or maybe he wasn’t lying, maybe he didn’t know what he was doing and that was the way he liked it. Let the furies decide. He left her in the bathroom to get ready and grabbed his kit from the bedroom.
“What’s with the bag and the board? Going skating?” Aaron said.
“Maybe. I take it with me everywhere. Me and Karen might end up getting a room. It’s kind of our vacation, you know. We need to have some fun.”
“Poor babies,” April said. “Broke down on the road.” She smiled at him and spoke in a whisper.
“Tell me the truth, is she even here? Did she run away?”
“She’s coming,” Roy said. “She has to dry her hair.”
Just then Karen strolled up with her bag on her shoulder: beautiful, capable, and all Roy’s, perfectly contained. You get one good one, he thought. Then he hefted his bag and chucked it by the door, thought: Maybe two. A billion people on the planet, there were more perfect matches for him than he could ever handle, an endless supply. This went both ways, he was replaceable, everyone was. The big picture could justify anything. On an atomic level he was at peace.
Introductions and speculation about a destination, food and entertainment. Karen passed him another beer. Another sixer had appeared. She made herself a plate of tacos. Aaron and April were eating with her, had their own plates.
Roy went to the kitchen window, the one above the sink, and wiped away the steam and could see snowflakes drifting easily into the glass. If you find yourself snowbound in the wilderness, it is important to be decisive. Don’t go to sleep. You might not wake up. From one of his dead father’s wilderness survival books. There is no such thing as cold and dead, only warm and dead. Dead muscles won’t contract.
Not that it helped you, Roy thought. Fell off a rock face in Yosemite and died before I learned to walk. He didn’t know his dad’s middle name or his birthday, only remembered meeting his grandmother once when she was on her last breath in the hospital. You look just like him. Like who? It didn’t make much sense to him then and probably made less now. Childhood mirrors and faded photographs, all of which got lost when Steve took over.
When he turned around Karen was watching him and for a moment he feared she could read the intentions on his face, or at least recognize that his fight-or-flight instinct had engaged. “What are you scheming over there?” she said.
“Just glad to be out of the cold,” he said. “Glad we made it.”
“Do you want to stay?” she asked.
“Where’d they go?”
“April’s in the bathroom and Aaron’s warming up the car. Did you not hear any of what we said?”
“I was spacing out.”
“Are you sure you want to go with them? We could stay. It’s stormy out and I’m not mad at you.”
“We should go with them. What else are we going to do?” This too brought a hurt look onto her face and Roy hated her for that, only for the briefest second, but his stomach recoiled and he hated her. She was making him do this, forcing him to pity her, and he wouldn’t.
The drive to Reno from Loyalton took a long time with the storm and the slushed-up roads. Roy sat in the front and helped Aaron finish his pint of Beam, while Karen and April sat in the back and drank beer. Roy listened as they talked about Milan Kundera and boots, Fryes. April had lost a pair to foxes when she’d left her muddy boots on the porch. She had a biology degree from the University of Washington but she wanted to be a vet, planned on going back to school soon but didn’t know when it would work out. She’d moved to town after she came to visit her brother, a FedEx driver that worked out of Truckee. She’d met Aaron at the hospital after her brother broke his collarbone mountain biking.
“Aaron was in the hallway, all copped out in his uniform,” April said. “There’d been a wreck with like five cars and he was doing interviews, trying to figure out what had happened. I listened in.”
“One of the drivers was having sex,” Aaron said, “or attempting to. He and his girlfriend caused the whole thing.”
“You’re lying,” Karen said.
“I’m not,” Aaron said. “The girlfriend died. The driver can’t walk.”
“Holy shit,” Roy said.
“He let me shoot his gun,” April said.
“What?” Karen said, laughing.
“We hadn’t even gone on a date yet,” Aaron said. “I could’ve been fired.” He passed Roy the bottle. “I was fired,” he said quietly.
They were exiting the highway, spiraling down an off-ramp toward the lowly grid of surface streets. It wasn’t snowing or even stormy at all and even with the city lights Roy could see stars. Biggest Little City. Aaron angled for the brightest lights, a moth, north star chaser.
“Not much to say about Reno,” April said.
“Nope,” Karen said.
“It’s not bad,” Aaron said. “There’s some cool shit down here. Tons of skaters.”
“Aaron said you were sponsored,” April said to Roy, touching his shoulder.
“When I was a kid I was OK.”
“Like Gary Coleman,” Karen said.
“Just like Gary Coleman,” Roy said. Thinking: Not that you ever did anything ever, when you were a kid or even now.
“I raced BMX,” Aaron said.
Roy nodded but didn’t give voice to his I-don’t-give-a-shit thoughts.
“Yeah, it was fun,” Aaron continued. “I went to races in Arizona and stuff. It’s expensive, though. When I didn’t seem to get much better, I plateaued is what my dad said, and the other kids, smaller, faster kids were winning all the time, I hung it up. Enter football. Hello, concussions.”
The car was quiet. There is no cold and dead when it comes to hypothermia because the heart can slow to three beats a minute. For the amateur it may be necessary to reheat the corpse to ascertain if the victim is dead. I’m at three beats a minute, Roy thought, and if I hang around here I’m going to be warm and safely bickering with Karen but I’ll be dead. Inside that house in the mountains with her, feeding the woodstove, feeding himself, fork and spoon, killing time watching basketball or hockey or whatever, TV baby, lost in the woods. He tried to imagine himself shoveling the driveway, stacking firewood, and he felt that old heat burning up the back of his neck, confinement. Or was it fear of work? He couldn’t see the difference. One slip-up and he’d never escape. If Karen got pregnant again, she was keeping it. She’d warned him.
Aaron pulled into a parking garage downtown and, driving up the ramp, mentioned a bar up the street where they could start, take it from there. Roy had the feeling they’d end up in a titty bar if they stuck with Aaron and April long enough but he wasn’t doing that. The tires squealed like a car chase in a cop show and Aaron leaned into it, playing the part. Roy was disgusted by his has-been-ness, used-to-be, ex-somebody. Close to home is what it was and Roy knew it. He was calling in an air strike on his own position. Used to have some sponsors. Used to play in some bands. What do you do now, like right now, what do you do?
They were three floors up and the searchlights of Reno traced a gambler’s epitaph on the night sky. April gathered the empties from under the seats and arranged them in a half-circle around the minivan parked beside them. Roy shotgunned a beer and got it all down his shirt and wiped at it stupidly with his hands. Karen pinched his ass and called him trash. Aaron pissed against a low concrete wall, his head leaned back staring at the concrete girder overhead. The traffic noise from below thrummed through the concrete chambers with choral undertones. Karen slipped under his arm.
“There’s nothing wrong with us,” she said.
Roy burped loudly and Karen waved away the stink with both hands. “We’re gonna firebomb the fun into this town,” he said. “We’re gonna ass-fuck the fun into this town.” He forced another burp and almost threw up. “Fuck this town.”
“Don’t let the whiskey drag you down,” she said seriously. “We really can have fun tonight. Nothing’s stopping us. Just take it easy.”
“I’m easy, babe. I’m so easy I’m almost dead.”
Inside, they got drinks. Aaron wouldn’t let them pay. They took in the crowd, dizzied by the noise, rockabilly clatter, three-piece band, Horton Heat wannabes. They posted up in a dark corner with a shaky table. Nobody was dancing but there was the occasional rooster-strutting pork chopper, sock-hopping Suicide Girl. Same as it ever was, Roy thought. Some places won’t let go. These folks are the sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters even, of desert greasers, Highway 66 throwbacks, outlaw bikers that have been picking at their collecti
ve melanoma and road rash since V-J Day. Roy liked them and the go-fuck-yerself-ness they off-gassed but at the root of it was just another wagon rut in the same old road. He was looking for the secret door, the way it hadn’t been done yet, true freedom, true cool.
They had two more rounds, Karen got the second, April the third, and then wandered back outside, up the street, toward one of the big casinos. The night was cold and crisp with a diesel-exhaust-tinged wisp of cloud rag among the lights and buildings.
Aaron was saying something about blackjack and Roy said, “Yeah, man, let’s go.” The women followed a few steps behind and Roy almost said something, like that’s the way it should be, but for once he held his tongue even though he’d have been joking. Of course he’d have been joking. Why did he think it, though? When was that pathway built? He didn’t want to be the little man, the small man, that treated his woman badly. He’d always hated that, the duh-fucking-right obviousness of the male ego, almost more than the treatment. But the way that women can catch that tiny, undeserved anger like a mountain can gather a storm, well, that was biological too, wasn’t it? The scene with him and Karen in the bathroom with the pregnancy test entered his mind, two pink parallel lines. Why didn’t they design the test or at least the indicator so that the lines came together? Even a no-GED dropout like Roy knew that parallel lines never touch. Where’s the kid supposed to fit into that equation?
Boots on the ground, the casino-ugly carpet, they watched part of the show, trapeze with nets, jugglers with fire. A security guard told them to keep it moving when they stopped on the catwalk for too long.
Karen says, “Something to see here, folks. Something to see. Move along.”
“Funny,” the guard said.
One of the trapeze guys was watching them get hassled from his little platform and for no reason Roy gave him a there-you-go-chief military salute. The guy smiled and sent one back and on his next turn hucked a double back flip like it was nothing, like he did it every day, and probably did. Where were the trapeze girls? What kind of show only had guys? Roy looked around to see who would field his question but the group had moved on. The guard was watching Roy, with a look of what the fuck, buddy. Get lost. He needed the door, the exit to where he was supposed to be, because it wasn’t here.
