A Prayer for Travelers

by Ruchika Tomar

  “He’s been going around without a name?” I asked once they were gone. “All this time?”

  “Wasn’t her thing,” he said, with a carelessness I could well imagine, coming from Penny. I crabwalked toward the dog. He stopped whining but still held himself rigid. I inched close enough for him to point his snout in my direction. He sniffed delicately, then, picking up the scent, came forward to sniff with more interest, growing excited, the old memory stirring. He rushed me then, working his snout under my palm, pushing my hand up once, twice, three times. Hi. Hi. Hi.

  I reached for him with both hands, stroking his soft crown, kissing his grown ear in apology for the early tumult of his young life. He set his front paws on my thigh, the way his brother had set his paws on Penny in the trailer. I had already been wrong about this dog once, betting against his generous heart, the propensity of animals to forgive. The man watched us for several minutes, fascinated or annoyed, I couldn’t tell.

  “Don’t steal him from me now.”

  “You’ll give him a great name, won’t you?”

  “I guess I’ll try.”

  “The girl who gave him to you. She must have trusted you. You have to know where she is.”

  “Do I?”

  “Please tell me.”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean,” the man said. “Who are you, anyway? You want to tell me what brought you here?”

  I smoothed the dog’s face one last time, then forced myself to stand, brushing the dirt from my legs.

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin,” I said.

  I reached for the flap on Penny’s purse and pulled out the last of Penny’s twenties from the coffee can. The man let the money hang between us, his arms still crossed.

  “Maybe you know something about the boy she came here with? Eric Spears?” I asked. “Tall, blond—kind of a jerk? He was a bouncer, too, back home. Anyway, I saw the news this morning. I’m not sure he’s doing much of that anymore.”

  The money hung between us for a moment. Finally the bouncer took it, tucking the bills deep inside his jacket. I felt something wet land square on my nose and brushed it away, only to feel something else landing on my bare arm, the back of my other hand. The man in black emerged from underneath the awning and looked up at the sky. I followed suit, stepping into the flurry to crane my neck, recalling the gangly usher at the movie theater and how close he always sat to the screen. I would go back and find him someday, I would tell him he was right. This was the best way to observe spectacle. The man beside me laughed, a rumbling sound that felt like joy. I stuck out my tongue and tasted snow.

  19

  T H E

  A Z T L Á N

  H O T E L

  73

  It was a forty-minute drive from the Golden Horseshoe to Reno, and even before I saw the casinos rising in the distance like a mythical cosmopolis, I could tell that this place, despite being the opposite of Pomoc in so many ways, was still also exactly the same. In the dark the Sierra Nevadas were mostly obscured, but I could still make out their irregular shape from their shadow, like a piece of construction paper ripped across the bottom of the sky. Driving through the center of town the casino lights reflected on the wet streets, washing the city in vivid color. The snow dissolved as soon as it touched our skin, but a lingering chill remained. The girls on the sidewalks remained defiant in skirts and shorts, loath to submit to the season. Unique amid the city’s angular skyline was the Silver Legacy’s ivory dome; in the northeast corner of the city, a two-hundred-thousand-square-foot double pyramid peaked above the fray. The last time I’d been here with Lamb, the Aztlán hadn’t yet broken ground, and Reno was still the old west’s antidote to Vegas in every way. But time had changed things, people, too; an influx of businesses had moved west, driving up development. As I drove closer, I circled the first large pyramid, following the arrows pointing to the second. It was a sprawling, multitiered garage. I took the last empty spot on the top floor. The long walk to the elevator didn’t feel unlike arriving at the Leaspoke only a few weeks earlier, save for the luxury cars I passed on the way, the high-tech camera system clearly marked every fifteen feet, a dozen lime-green sensors, blinking.

  Lourdes’ rich tía got married there.

  All of life a repetition, the details slightly changed.

  I took the elevator to the ground floor, where the doors opened onto a nascent passage marked with tōnalpōhualli symbols. I followed as it fed into a grand lobby where guests milled across an enormous sunstone. A small family was huddled by one of the engraved columns, each of them loaded with backpacks and camera equipment, the father directing his lens to a vaulted skylight projecting a vast and shifting cosmos. At the front desk, women in long, rust-colored tunics watched coolly over the crowd. I was absorbed by the momentum of tourists cycling through the floor around discreet bars and restaurants. I stepped inside a gift shop, thinking of Lamb, a decade’s worth of miniature teddy bears and feather keychains collecting dust in my bedroom dresser at home. But this store was all sharp, polished corners; silk scarves in glass cases, gold jewelry, rich textiles hanging from tall fabric racks. The woman behind the counter ran her eyes over my shorts and tank top, a reminder of my appearance and its devolvement over weeks on the road. As I edged out of the store, I saw her reaching for the phone on her desk. I hadn’t forgotten the look on Fischer’s face as he approached the Golden Bear’s café, or my own narrow escape.

  I crossed the lobby to the main elevator bay and ducked onto the next lift, heading up. A ruddy-faced businessman stepped on, too, adjusting his disheveled suit, loosening the tie around his neck, enveloping us both in the fumes of his alcohol consumption and bluegrass cologne. I recalled Fischer’s words about Penny at the Leaspoke—they show her getting on the elevator. So these cameras would capture me, too, for better or worse. The man produced a cardboard envelope of keycards and pressed a button for the twenty-sixth floor, swiping the card through a slim reader protruding from the door. He leaned against the mirror as the lift closed and we began to rise, his face slackening in repose. I simply took the envelope from between his fingers—they tightened slightly as I pulled, then they released—and I removed one of the cards before replacing the envelope in his hand. He said nothing to me, just watched with calm, bloodshot eyes. When the doors reopened on his floor, he heaved himself away from the mirror.

  “Be good,” he said, the doors closing behind him. I punched another button and went down one floor, walking the hushed, labyrinthine hallway from end to end, then stepped back on the elevator to repeat the exercise on every subsequent floor. Somewhere inside this casino, Fischer was being called, or had already arrived; I felt time slipping by. On the nineteenth floor, I passed service trays piled in the hall, the murmurs of televisions trapped behind heavy doors. On the fifteenth, at the end of the hall, voices were pitched in anger. On the thirteenth, I followed the hall to a glass-paneled fitness center and swiped the card again to enter a room lined with aerodynamic treadmills and rows of free weights, all four walls embedded with full-screen TVs.

  I couldn’t bear another headline, but these televisions were playing a national news network with broader concerns; a kohl-eyed reporter spoke seriously from the middle of a Marrakech souk merchants in the background vying to bogart the lens. On the other end of the gym was another darkened glass door flanked by card readers and a second tōnalpōhualli symbol I couldn’t read, but was sure corresponded to the hotel map I had passed in the elevator bay. I swiped the key and stepped into a large, open-air courtyard, shivering from the chill.

  This high up, the breeze was sharp and cold, rustling the dark green shrubs that lined the planters, the huddle of patio umbrellas lashed in anticipation of the next warm day. The beach chairs, too, had been stacked in a corner, save for one chaise dragged away from the others, draped by a towel. In the center of the courtyard an enormous hourglass pool changed colors from a deep turquois
e to an uncanny, kryptonite green. The woman crossing its surface took long, smooth strokes, impervious to the weather or the minuscule black bikini I wouldn’t have been surprised to learn had been purchased by the disheveled businessman I had just left—or by any number of men foolish enough to believe her affections might be bought. I walked over to the chaise and picked up the towel, weighing damp and heavy in my hands.

  I stripped off Penny’s purse, my tank top and shorts, and left them in a pile on the concrete, easing into the shallow edge of the pool. It was ice cold, freezing my feet, legs, belly, breasts. I dunked my head under and screamed at the feeling, the water eating up the sound. The pool changed colors again, our bodies moving through the deep, vibrant red of languid magma. I came to float on the surface. When I looked down, I could see gooseflesh rippling my skin, my nipples poking through my thin cotton bra. Above us the sky was jet black, the pyramids’ lights eclipsing the stars. I closed my eyes and tried to focus on my breath, the sounds of splashing. I was waiting for hotel security to crash through the doors at any minute, for Fischer’s angry voice to crack across the courtyard—but the longer the silence lasted, the deeper I slipped into a strange inertia, the water lapping at my ears. I might have fallen asleep if not for the acute cold, the uneasy knowledge that the splashing had stopped, the water’s equilibrium slowly shifting, and going still. I opened my eyes to find her sunk in the water not two feet away, only her eyes and nose breaking the surface. The first pyramid’s wide, candy-colored peak soared up behind her. She tilted her head back, clearing her mouth from the water to speak.

  “Surprise,” Penny said.

  81

  74

  I waited for Penny to swim closer, realizing, as she did, that I had entirely forgotten the small second mole on her chin, how maddening she was in the flesh. She leaned back into the water, coming to float nearby. We stayed like that for some time, suspended on our backs within arm’s length of each other. I shivered again, a deep, emergent chill.

  “Your cop’s been snooping around,” she said.

  “Mine?” I made a strangled sound at the back of my throat. “He’s been looking for you.”

  “You believe that? He told the front desk manager you emptied a magazine into that boy’s headboard.”

  “He’s hardly a boy.”

  “But that’s what your cop said. He’s going to be a boy now, forever.”

  I closed my eyes. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “In the moment.”

  I sank my legs down in the water, turning to face her. She kept her eyes closed, her arms stretched out, palms to the sky, the same as Lamb had when I came upon him in the doctor’s exam room weeks before, chasing grace in his darkest hour. Yet I had never thought of Penny as someone who received; she was the one who meted out judgment, who acted upon the world. The pool changed colors again. We were drifting in a frigid amethyst sea, and I was beginning to lose feeling in my legs. I reached out and pinched her arm. Her skin was rubbery. Still real.

  “I didn’t suggest you try to kill him, Cale. I said I wanted to.”

  “I wasn’t trying to kill him.”

  “Then what were you doing?”

  I shoved her then, hard enough to upset her balance. Her eyes fluttered open, she backstroked to keep afloat.

  “He doesn’t remember us! He doesn’t remember anything!”

  Penny sank down legs first, then waist, ribs, chest and neck, gathering speed to pike underwater. The pool turned green again, lighting up her sinuous shape from below. I kept treading water, though I sensed her an instant before her hand closed around my ankle, yanking me under. The icy water rushed over my head. All at once I remembered Alvaro, Flaca, the bathtub full of snakes, and Penny among them. I sucked in cold water, kicking my free leg in an attempt to stay close to the surface. I felt her hands climbing up my calf, trying to secure a firmer grip. I kicked again and connected with her shoulder, then lunged forward and kicked a third time, harder than necessary. Wanting to bruise her.

  She released me, and I propelled myself back to the surface, coughing, gasping, my eyes stinging with chlorine. I swallowed, my throat sore. She slipped up to the surface only a few feet away, keeping low and partially hidden, only her eyes above the water, watching my reaction. I was hurt and felt dumb for it.

  “Fuck you!”

  When the water had settled, she tilted her head above the water to speak.

  “He’s never going to remember anything again. We did that.”

  “I know.” My face ached from the cold, my lips and nose beginning to turn numb. “I needed to see him.”

  She was nodding. “But now you’ve pissed off a cop.”

  “He’s just pissed I stole his gun.”

  She laughed, a genuine, sparkling sound. The pool changed colors again, hemorrhaging a deep, dark sapphire. We could have been in the ocean, how far away everything seemed. She caught my eyes. I watched her mirth slowly dissolve. I remembered the look on the bouncer’s face when I mentioned Eric’s name, a similar leaching of sentiment. I hesitated, cautious now.

  “Where did Fischer go? This the floor manager . . . ?”

  Her smirk, familiar still. “Relax. She just redirected him a bit. He’ll be here soon.”

  “Penny. Do you understand? I thought something happened to you.”

  “Something did,” she said. She rolled facedown in the water, her hips and legs coming up to float. She let herself drift like that for a second, a corpse in the water, her hair fanning out before she sank her legs back down to tread. Her hair was sticking to her face like a dark spider web. When she reached up to push it away, I realized she had cut it. I hadn’t noticed when it was slicked back from her forehead, hidden behind her shoulders, but now the ends were clinging to her collarbone. I felt an air bubble growing inside my chest, threatening to pop.

  “Penny,” I said. “I don’t think you understand. I thought you were dead.”

  “Not me.”

  I watched her face for some crack of emotion, the tremor of remorse she would never allow herself to show.

  “Eric?” I paused, but she said nothing. “I’m going to guess he deserved it.”

  “That’s a good guess.” She spit water. “Define deserve.”

  “If you had just told me you were going, I would have come with you.”

  “I know.”

  “It makes no difference, you mean.”

  “I mean I didn’t know how far I would go. I mean I didn’t mean for any of this. But it makes no difference now.”

  “What will you do?”

  “I don’t know.” She said it simply, as if we might be discussing the weather, the latest customer to come into Jake’s, their strange and incongruous food pairings. “Any ideas?”

  “I thought you were the one with all the good ideas.”

  She considered this. “Maybe the aliens will come get me.”

  She dunked her head, disappearing under the water. I waited for her to return. When she did, she was closer, only a few inches away. Another breeze blew across the patio, causing us both to shiver. I waited for whatever terrible thing she might do. But she only took my hand out of the water and pressed it, briefly, to her chest. Her skin, exposed above the water, was just as cold as mine. When she met my eyes, I saw her. Just Penny. Not terrible, not mythic. Not particularly good, for long periods of time, at passing as someone who was. My shivers were turning into shakes, the icy feeling penetrating my bones. I would need to lie in front of a fire to get rid of it, I would need to climb into one. Penny lowered my hand back into the water, squeezing it briefly before letting go.

  A shudder overtook me, my body rejecting the chill. “I’m so cold.”

  “I know. We both have to get out soon.”

  “Where can we go?”

  She shook her head. “You go.”

  “Penny�
��”

  She shook her head. “He’s okay. Leave me here. Let him come.”

  “Why?”

  She looked at me then, her eyelashes wet and stuck together, her eyes enormous. I saw in them all the banked fear Wolf and Trixie had around the brush fires; the idea that something existed in nature more unpredictable and ferocious than themselves. Something that would, if they weren’t careful, eventually eat them alive.

  “We always do what I want,” she said.

  75

  There were only three pay phones left in Reno. I was still shivering when I dropped my quarter into the coin slot outside the Diamond Aces Motel & RV Park, my damp underwear like something dead between my legs, though I had wrung them out at the Aztlán before wriggling them back on. I knew I should have thrown away my wet things, but I couldn’t bear to leave anything else behind. I worried a scale of paint from the booth with my fingernail while I listened to the phone ring, the flaking Pepto pink a local prank or somber attempt to compliment the Aces’ flickering neon sign, I didn’t know. On the other side of the phone, no one spoke, but the ringing stopped. I couldn’t tell if the call had dropped, my heart prepared to follow. I was all out of change. Eventually I discerned the sound of someone breathing.

  “Hello?”

  “What,” Flaca’s voice was still thick with sleep, “the fuck?”

  “I thought you never slept,” I said. But I did feel bad. I was forever disturbing people’s rest. I no longer obeyed the boundaries of night and day, I couldn’t seem to remember why others did. A moment passed, the yawn that followed only a degree less hostile. Languorous, like any creature roused in the middle of the night, waiting for the shape in the brush to emerge. I could hear some other noise in the background on Flaca’s end; a fan running, a stranger’s snore. I waited for wakefulness to dawn, for her to realize the time, my voice, the reason I might be calling. I gave her a minute, though there was hardly any left to spare.