Coming of Age at the End of Days

by Alice LaPlante

  They drive on and on through the endless prairie. Finally, in midafternoon, growing tired, they agree to stop for the day. The left turn at 287 North, in Rawlins, Wyoming, takes them through the most upscale community than they’ve seen since leaving Salt Lake City. They pass a gleaming fifties’-style restaurant, Penny’s Diner, but Lars shakes his head, and also at the glossy chain hotels planted in the center of town. No cars in any of the parking lots.

  “We’d be too noticeable,” he says.

  “So weird,” Anna says, “All these hotels, empty.”

  “Didn’t you see that sign for the Frontier Prison ­Museum? I bet that fills the hotels during tourist season.” Lars smiles. Anna has never heard sarcasm from him before. A first.

  “It’s people in transit along 80,” Anna says. “Probably a lot go through here in the summer.”

  “Not the high season right now.” Lars speaks with authority. “Keep going, I want a place outside the main junction.”

  The Rawlins municipal building seems to be a combination town hall and recreation center, with notices of executive council meetings posted alongside Spin with Lynn and Jr. Rifle League. There are the usual holiday decorations, only unlike the ones in California, they’re fake. These green boughs look truly exotic after the miles of dirt stretching in all directions. They pass the Frontier Prison Museum, two cars in the parking lot, and then they are done with Rawlins. Anna is tired, so tired.

  “I have to stop soon,” she says, “I can’t keep my eyes open much longer.”

  “Look for something small. Not a chain. A privately run place,” Lars instructs.

  “I’m not sure we’re going to see anything out here,” Anna says. “We might have to go back to Rawlins, find someplace off the main drag.”

  Lars shrugs. But a few miles down the road they see a motel so downmarket it doesn’t even have a name. Just the sign Motel. One other car in the lot. Anna pulls in. Lars stays in the car while an elderly woman takes down Anna’s name and accepts thirty-five dollars in cash. They are given no. 8, which has two beds and a chest of drawers. It reeks of skunk. Things skitter just out of eyesight. The bathroom pipes squawk as Anna showers. When she emerges from the tiny bathroom, Lars is asleep on the bed farthest from the door. He pulled down the shades and put the chain up. The shadows of bristles on his face are much more pronounced than when they left Sunnyvale. If anything, they make him look younger; they accentuate the soft whiteness of the skin on his neck. Sleeping faun. Deceptively innocent-looking.

  Anna takes the bed nearest the door, and lies down. The next thing she knows, her eyes are open but she can barely see, the light is so dim. She brushes the curtains aside and sees that it’s dusk. She’s slept the rest of the day away. She looks over at Lars, who still seems to be sleeping deeply.

  Taking the key, Anna unhooks the chain from the door and carefully closes it behind her. There are no newspaper stands in sight, so Anna walks to the office to ask if they have a paper. The elderly woman is gone. A young blonde girl, not much older than Anna, has taken her place. She’s smoking despite the large No smoking sign above the register, and it’s tough to breathe in the small space. Through a half-open door Anna sees a small room with an unmade bed. The girl looks at Anna curiously, but manages to find today’s Rawlins Sentinel.

  Anna thanks the girl, takes the paper, and leaves. The cold is shocking after the overheated room; she’s only wearing Jim Fulson’s threadbare UCLA sweatshirt and jeans. She considers going back inside, but the smoke-filled office doesn’t attract her, despite its padded seats and vending machine. She leans against the motel wall and opens up the front section of the paper and reads it by the light over the office door. Nothing about a stolen car and two teenagers on the loose in Utah. Nothing about kidnappings in California. They’d passed Wyoming state troopers three times while driving, but none of them gave chase. Ms. Thadeous and Jim Fulson must not have reported them. Somehow they seem to be safe. Thank the Lord.

  47

  AFTER READING THE PAPER, ANNA is uncertain what to do next. Go back to the motel room and remain quiet, stare at the wall while Lars sleeps? No book. No iPod. Her stomach rumbles. They’d stopped at a Burger King in Rock Springs for breakfast, but hadn’t eaten anything since. Anna curses Lars for forcing them to stay in the middle of nowhere, but then notices that at the far end of the street is a white aluminum-sided building. It is recessed from the road, behind a large oak tree, one of the few trees in the vicinity. A single lighted sign of a slightly tipped martini glass hangs out front, and under it, Cocktails and Good Food written in a cursive font Anna associates with the 1950s.

  The room is mostly empty when Anna enters except for two kids playing video games and a man sitting at the bar holding a glass between his hands. It’s insufferably hot, so Anna immediately sheds her sweatshirt. She chooses the bar rather than one of the tables, carefully taking a stool two seats away from the man. He’s a burly type, with industrial-looking waterproof clothes and gear heaped on the stools between them. An emergency technician or fireman, Anna guesses. The bartender is younger, Anna estimates about Ms. Thadeous’s age. Anna orders a white wine. The bartender doesn’t ask for ID although Anna can’t look more than fourteen, her short hair still wet from her shower, no makeup.

  A boxy room, nothing picturesque or even barlike about it. A Formica-topped counter. No real wood anywhere. The floor is linoleum, the tables metal. Even the bar stools are just thin steel tubes with fake leather seats. It looks like a lunch counter. When she asks the bartender if he has anything to eat, he throws a couple bags of Doritos down in front of her.

  “Sorry, that’s all I got,” he says. “You’re lucky we’re even open. We typically close down after Thanksgiving.”

  Anna is still testing her stool to see if it can bear her weight, it feels so rickety. “Why didn’t you?” she asks.

  “The weather,” says the bartender. “No snow, no storms. We’re seeing a lot more cars coming through here than usual. Trucks drive through all year but they prefer to stay in Rawlins, more stuff going on there. No reason to stay open for them. But people that don’t know the route, they go past Rawlins, realize their mistake, and see us. Most of our customers stumble in here by accident.”

  “Like me,” Anna says.

  “Like you.”

  After giving Anna her wine, the bartender goes into the back room; Anna can hear thuds as if he’s hoisting and stacking heavy boxes.

  “So why you here?” asks the man, two stools down. The fireman. His voice is surprisingly high, almost a falsetto, but not unpleasant.

  A thick yellow rubber coat and pants are hanging on the stools between them. He’s kept his boots on; they are huge, he is huge, a Paul Bunyan of a man, with a cratered face. Hands. Big hands, with long, sinewy fingers. Hands that would save. Anna wonders how many chances he gets to be heroic here.

  “Just passing through,” Anna says, and braces herself for more questions, but he seems to have run out. He returns to studying his beer.

  The bartender comes back, weighed down by a large crate marked Guinness. He heaves it onto the floor, starts loading bottles into the fridge. He’s not bad-looking, a full beard but oddly, no mustache. It gives him an Amish look. His T-shirt is red with the words Why Not embossed on it.

  Anna finishes her white wine and considers asking for another. She doesn’t know if sufficient time has passed for that to be acceptable. She runs her hands over the curious marks on the bar top, as if someone has been chewing it. Anna’s stool squeaks when she moves, even if she just shifts slightly, so she tries to keep still. Outside the front window, darkness. It’s now 6:30 in the evening.

  “Where you from?” The fireman again.

  Anna considers her answer. “California,” she says finally. The license plates in the motel parking lot would give her away, anyway.

  “Long way.”

  Anna nods, but looks
down, not wanting to encourage this kind of questioning.

  The bartender is wiping down the bar. “So you drove all the way here in December? You couldn’t have done that ten or even five years ago,” he says. “Anyone who claims the weather isn’t behaving strangely needs to pay us a visit.”

  The fireman orders another beer. He’s constantly checking his cell phone, disappointed each time.

  “Expecting something? Or just hoping,” asks the bartender. Although the words are teasing, he asks in a respectful way. Anna likes that.

  The fireman gives a snort that could mean anything. But he puts the silent phone away in his pocket.

  “Don’t you get worried about earthquakes there in California?” he asks.

  “Don’t you worry about fires here? Blizzards? Tornados?” Anna retorts.

  “I saw this video on YouTube,” says the bartender. “Apparently, all you Californians are wrong about what to do in case of an earthquake. A fireman was giving this talk on how getting under a table or in a doorway is a lot of hooey. You’re sure to die that way, crushed by falling stuff. He said there’s a better way. He called it the Triangle of Life. What you do is find the biggest object in the room and lie down next to it, not under it. There’s a void there, a protective space, in the shape of a triangle that exists next to every big object in the room if the ceiling collapses. You have to get into that Triangle of Life in an earthquake or you’re dead meat.”

  Anna shakes her head. No one can tell her about earthquakes. Her father taught her well.

  “That theory’s been proven wrong. Drop, cover, and hold on is still best,” says Anna.

  “That’s what I’ve been taught,” says the fireman.

  “No, he showed pictures,” insists the bartender. “Of a room after an earthquake. Next to the big dining room table and this huge china cabinet you could distinctly see the triangles—areas where nothing had fallen or been damaged.”

  “I’m not saying these voids don’t exist,” Anna says patiently, the way she’s heard her father explain it. “But depending on the architecture, the type of quake, and what’s in the room, your injuries could be worse if you tried to find the triangle than just following the tried-and-true drill.”

  “You’ve clearly thought about this,” the fireman says.

  “Someone I knew certainly did.” Knew, she said without thinking. The denial stage passed without Anna noticing. She understands now that her parents are irrefutably gone. “I’ll have another white wine,” she says.

  “Not likely we’ll have to worry about that anytime soon,” the bartender says as he fills her glass.

  “Not soon, but eventually. One day it’ll happen,” Anna says. “You’ve got the New Madrid Fault that runs through the Midwest, including parts of Nebraska. Then you’ve got the Fort Union Fault. That’s part of the Mid-Continent Rift System, which is basically a gigantic, billion-year-old crevice under our feet. It’s seven hundred miles long and forty miles wide in places. When that goes, hold on.”

  Everyone lapses into silence after this speech. The fireman leaves shortly after, gathering his gear and carrying it with him into a newish Ford Explorer parked outside the large windows. He sees Anna looking as he starts it up, and he gives a wave. She waves back.

  Anna eats both packages of Doritos. She then devours a bag of pretzels the bartender finds in the back room. Finishing her third glass of wine, Anna realizes she’s traveled beyond the pleasant point she’d reached in that other bar, that night from her previous life with Jim Fulson and Ms. Thadeous, but still she doesn’t stop. She orders, and drinks, another glass. Then she has to pee, and slides off her stool and walks unsteadily to the door marked Ladies. On the back of the stall door is a poster for Miss Rawlins 2011 contest. The silhouette of a cowgirl on a bucking horse holding her hat above her head has been predictably defaced. Someone has drawn large breasts on her, and she is surrounded by a virtual cloud of disembodied penises. All the graffiti scratched into the metal walls of the stall are sexual. Who has done what to whom. That’s always the issue, isn’t it, Anna thinks. Who is getting the most love.

  When Anna emerges from the bathroom, the girl from the motel office is occupying her stool.

  “Saw you head here,” she says. “Hope you don’t mind if I join you. Finally got off work.”

  “Of course not,” Anna says. She is rather, no, very, drunk. Anna takes the seat next to the girl, grabs her wineglass, only dregs in it.

  “Stephen!” the girl calls. The bartender comes slowly out of the back room.

  “Oh you,” he says, and without saying anything else pours a shot of tequila and puts it in front of her. She downs it in one swallow and holds it out to him. He shakes his head, but pours another.

  “That your boyfriend with you?”

  “Just a friend.”

  “On the road together?”

  Anna considers what to say. The girl had asked in an offhand way, Stephen isn’t paying attention, and it doesn’t seem to matter to either of them who or what Anna is. Was. She’s reluctant to lie, so she just nods. “We took off.”

  “I was on the road myself last year. Got stuck when my ride dropped me here and I couldn’t get another one. I started cleaning rooms for Greta, watching the front desk when she needs a break. She lets me crash in the back office, too.”

  “You don’t mind being stuck in this place?” Anna asks. She’s dying to find out the girl’s age, but stops herself from asking.

  “Everyone’s okay,” the girl says. “Actually, Greta sent me to find out the scoop. If you’re runaways or whatever. Don’t worry, I won’t tell. It’s not like Greta would do anything, she’s only curious. She likes a good story. You could tell her the wildest tale and she wouldn’t pass it on. Just chew it over.”

  Stephen laughs. “You got Greta pegged right.” He comes out from behind the bar and heads for the bathrooms. “Behave while I’m gone,” he calls.

  When he’s gone, Anna opens her purse and gives the girl a hundred-dollar bill. “Tell her we’re eighteen and pregnant and just got married in Reno but it’s all legal.”

  The girl takes the bill, quickly pushes it into her jeans pocket, eyes Anna’s flat stomach. “Pregnant?” she asks. “If I was a different kind of person, I’d tell you to ease up a bit.” She nods at the empty glasses on the bar.

  “Not really,” Anna says. “That’s only chewing material for Greta.”

  “Oh. Gotcha. But why are you drinking this terrible wine if you’ve got money? Why not have a real drink?”

  “I’ve never had one,” Anna says.

  “Now’s the time. What’ll you have?”

  “Vodka,” Anna says. She’s her father’s daughter after all.

  The girl glances quickly toward the bathrooms, then reaches behind the bar and picks a bottle up by the neck. She pours until Anna’s wineglass is three-quarters full. “He’s not as stupid as he seems, so drink this quick.”

  It burns into a hot little puddle in Anna’s stomach. There’s a moment when her throat rebels from the harshness, then a deep shudder, and the world looks slightly brighter. “Another,” Anna says. The girl reaches down and has the bottle poised over Anna’s glass when Stephen emerges from the bathroom.

  “Caught you red-handed,” he says. “And I told you to be good.”

  Anna reaches into her purse, and extracts another hundred-dollar bill. Monopoly money.

  “Will this cover it?” she asks.

  Stephen laughs. “I’ll say.”

  “Can I pour now?” asks the girl.

  “If that’s what the woman wants, that’s what she gets,” Stephen says. He kisses the hundred and puts it in his wallet.

  “It’s what I want,” Anna says. I am my father’s daughter. I am my father’s daughter.

  “So why are you really here? Why’d you take off?” asks the girl.


  Anna has to think about this. “Obsessions,” she says finally. Images. Sounds. The Red Heifer. Bosch’s depiction of hell. A rock hitting a tree. A rock splashing in a river. The flex of an arm attached to a shoulder throwing a rock.

  “Give me a hint,” says the girl.

  Anna considers it. Drunk as she is, she tries to phrase her reply carefully. “He’s not for me,” Anna says.

  “Oh, that kind of obsession.”

  “So what I want to know,” Anna says, “is how you become un-obsessed.”

  She doesn’t expect an answer, but the girl provides one. “You take action,” she says. “You take control.”

  Anna thinks of her father’s earthquake preparedness, his counting cans and noting expiration dates, her mother’s repeated playing of Mahler. Rituals for managing obsessions. Acknowledging that they exist, and would always exist. Running them into the ground. Anna knows what she has to do. She finally knows. She slides off her stool, heads unsteadily for the door.

  “Glad I could help,” the girl calls after her.

  48

  ANNA TRIES THE DOOR TO the hotel room. It’s locked. She knocks softly. When she doesn’t get an answer, she fumbles with the key, manages to insert it into the lock, and opens the door with much more noise than she intended. No one there, the sheets and blanket on Lars’s bed rumpled. The room is warm and moist and smells like soap, the window fogged. The heat and damp are coming from the bathroom, the door is open halfway. Inside, the light is on.

  Lars is in the bathtub, lying with his eyes closed. Endearingly, he has used the tiny bottle of complimentary shampoo as bubble bath, and the tub is piled high with frothy white foam. His hair is wet and slicked back. The normally pale skin on his shoulders and neck is flushed. All else is submerged in the tub, under the bubbles. A tiny spider hangs on a thread from the ceiling right above Lars’s head.