South on Highland: A Novel

by Liana Maeby

  I laughed. “That’s great.”

  Johnny didn’t say anything; he just cut the engine and stepped out. I stayed in the cart, unsure what the plan might be. He walked up to the door of the Bates Motel and knocked. Norman poked his head out, and, seeing Johnny, opened up. Johnny turned to me. “You coming?”

  There was very little inside the room, and certainly nothing that might peg it as the interior of a motel. A few chairs, a desk, and a mini fridge were positioned around the room, all pretty dusty. Books and magazines were scattered everywhere, and a laptop was open to a PDF of a script.

  As soon as we were inside the room, Johnny disappeared into the bathroom. I smiled tentatively at Norman Bates, who stuck out his hand. “Yo, I’m Bradley.”

  “Leila,” I said. “So how do you know Johnny?”

  “We were roommates when he first moved to LA.”

  “Oh, cool.”

  “Not really. It was a shithole on Franklin.”

  “Well, it sounds less murdery than the Bates Motel.”

  Bradley grinned. He was tall and good-looking despite his pasty pallor—a pretty fair approximation of Anthony Perkins, even up close. He offered me a chair. A moment later, Johnny came out of the bathroom looking a little dazed, but also content. He’d run water over his face, and some of it had pooled around the collar of his T-shirt. I watched him cross the room, unable to stop my eyes from flying over his arms in search of track marks. “So,” Johnny said, sitting down on the floor across from me and really looking at my face for the first time. “Let’s meet. What’s up with this project?”

  “Well, I’m still in the preliminary stages of the script. Just doing research first, you know? There’s a book by one of the women who escaped from Marshall Viner’s ranch, and I’m reading that.”

  Johnny nodded and tapped his fingers against the side of his leg.

  “And there’s another book,” I said, suddenly feeling shy and unprepared. “Sort of an unofficial biography of Viner. It’s pretty interesting, and, um . . .” I smiled nervously. “Would you excuse me? For one second.”

  I got up from the chair and walked into the bathroom, where I rolled my eyes at my own reflection in the cracked mirror. I ran the tap and pulled some powder from my bag. I dumped all of it out onto a makeup compact and pushed it into two enormous lines.

  “Focus,” I whispered to myself before I snorted up the drugs. I flushed the toilet for show, and by the time I had reached my seat across from Johnny again, I could feel my brain grinding itself into a sharp point.

  “So,” I said, talking quickly and finally feeling in control. “I’ve got those books, which are great, but I’m also doing some ground research. There’s some kind of commune situation out in the desert I’ve been hearing about. Lots of lost little rich kids giving everything up for a life of caves and free love. Kind of like a permanent Coachella, I guess.”

  “Huh,” Johnny laughed. “Bizarre.”

  “Totally. I guess it’s getting popular, but there’s basically no information about it on the Internet. Definitely sounds like a culty affair to me.”

  “When are you going?”

  “Leaving tomorrow,” I said. “Hey, you should come.”

  I regretted the overeager invitation instantly and tried to backtrack. “For character research, I mean. But I can just as easily take notes for you. Or maybe you’ve already got your own thing going on—”

  “Sure,” Johnny said, shrugging.

  “Wait. Really?”

  “Why not? But I get to drive, cool?”

  I nodded, not letting myself believe that I was actually about to take a trip to the desert with Johnny Isherwood. There was just no way something like that could happen. We talked about the movie for a while longer, pausing to watch Bradley intermittently grab his prop knife and become Norman Bates. Later, Johnny drove us back down the hill in the dark, nearly crashing the cart into a tree. He stopped at the lot where my car was parked, and idled the engine. He smiled at me, a grin that was at once relaxed and full of mischief.

  “Well,” I said, getting out of the cart. “I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Johnny said. There was a flash of motion as he grabbed my wrist. He pulled it so I tumbled back toward him. Then he grabbed my head and kissed me, deeply, but only for a moment.

  Johnny turned his head back toward the road and revved the engine. I stumbled out of the cart and walked through the parking lot, trying hard not to smile. I had just kissed the matinee idol of my goddamn dreams, and tomorrow he was loading up his needles, picking me up, and driving us out to the California desert.

  PART TWO

  Cactus Needles

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  EXT. FERRIS WHEEL – MORNING

  A Ferris wheel stands alone in the middle of the desert. It rotates through the air. Down below is a camp: there are tents, double-wide trailers, a makeshift stage, and rocks painted with Navajo patterns in neon colors.

  Leila and JOHNNY sleep in one of the Ferris wheel’s carts. As the ride reaches its apex, Leila wakes up. She tries to stand but is very wobbly. She looks around, confused.

  Below is a SKINNY GIRL who wears a bright-pink feather headdress.

  LEILA

  (groaning)

  Oh. My. God.

  Suddenly, Leila leans over the edge. She vomits, spewing bile inches from the girl’s feet.

  The girl looks at the ground and then up at the Ferris wheel. Absurdly, she just grins.

  LEILA

  What the fuck?

  Johnny starts to laugh from his place on the floor of the cart. He doesn’t even open his eyes.

  LEILA

  Ugh, why are you laughing?

  Leila slides back down to the floor.

  LEILA

  And how the hell did we even get here?

  Leila rests her head on Johnny’s shoulder.

  JOHNNY

  Five more minutes. And then we’ll get up.

  Johnny’s hands napped on top of the steering wheel—pale digits with dirty fingernails and small black stains—so immobile they barely balanced the burning cigarette that was in the process of stinking up our shitty little car. I studied the maddening stillness of Johnny’s hands with bouncing eyeballs and wondered which of us was in better shape for driving. We were heading east on the I-10, etching a path through the methane-gas wasteland that sits outside Los Angeles. Big rigs rolled along to our right, and elderly pickups sputtered behind us. Ahead, an impoverished pasture steamed under a flat bed of light.

  We had the radio tuned to a country-pop station for the exciting reason that it was the only thing Johnny’s duct-taped antenna would pick up out here in suntanned cow land. Soft-voiced and sleepy-eyed, Johnny intermittently crooned original lyrics over the twangy guitars. “I like deep-fried Jesus and shootin’ guns. I’m the boy next door, and I’m on the run.”

  “Didn’t we just hear this song?” I asked.

  “I got a woman loves her daddy and braised Christ. She’s got a head full of maggots and a heart full of lice.”

  “I swear, this was on ten minutes ago. Your lyrics took a weird turn.”

  Johnny smiled at me. “Me and my woman gonna have some motherfucking fun. I’m the boy next door, and I’m on the run.”

  “Hey, Johnny?” I said, smiling despite myself and trying in vain to find another station. “You are anything but next-door.”

  Johnny took his hands off the wheel. The car helped itself to two lanes as it barreled forward on the smooth concrete. I spun around toward Johnny right as he leaned over, grabbed me by the head, and kissed me hard. He returned his grip to the steering wheel just in time to veer us out of the path of a big green Heineken delivery truck. The truck’s horn blared behind us for the next mile, competing with the radio static that burst in through the speakers.

  “You are a fucking lunatic,” I said, shaking my head and leaning over to light us a pair of cigarettes.

  Noon had long come and gone by the time
Johnny picked me up from my apartment in Silver Lake. Although we’d only been driving for a few hours, the sun was already descending into a hazy blue lighting setup. We rolled along in silence for a while. I stared into the infinite absolutely-fucking-nothing out the window and tried to block the dark thoughts that were creeping their way up from the recesses of my muted brain. That’s what quiet does to me. I noticed that Johnny had begun to squirm in his seat, and I could feel myself coming down from the wad of amphetamines I’d ingested before leaving the house. It didn’t make me sick, per se—the aches and gut-fire and cold sweats came much later—but even en route to the dwelling of an underground cult, with a movie star seated inches to my left, being drugless made me feel completely and utterly normal. And that’s what I’d learned to hate the most.

  “Hey—you want to be on the lookout for a rest stop?” I asked Johnny, throwing my hair up into a ponytail to prevent it from crawling along the back of my neck.

  “Yeah,” he said too quickly. “I have to, uh—”

  “Yeah, I do too . . .”

  We followed a “Food/Gas” sign off the freeway and parked the car. Johnny and I walked to the bungalow of bathrooms and split up according to the pair of stick figures who silently announced implications about our respective genitalia. Inside the filthy restroom, I splashed cold water on my sticky face, reapplied the eyeliner that had smudged to raccoon-mug proportions, and prepared myself for the rush of synthetic energy that was headed my way.

  I realized with annoyance that most of my drugs were stashed in the duffel bag I had hastily packed and thrown into the trunk of the car, and I didn’t feel like waiting for Johnny to finish his own clandestine fix. I held the remaining bit of what was once a gram of cocaine up to the fluorescent lightbulb, tapped the sides free of clinging powder, and rummaged around in my purse until I found a renegade Adderall hiding amongst a pile of copper Lincolns—an orange thirty-milligrammer, perfect for cutting into quarters. I crushed it, mixed it in with my coke, and snorted the whole thing up with two Olympian inhalations.

  The sun had almost set by the time I finished freshening inside the bathroom. I wandered into the convenience store and bought a bottle of water and a pack of cigarettes. The carcinogen-baked old man behind the counter looked me over, eyeing judgment onto my leather shorts and studded ankle boots. “I seen you and your feller pull in,” he said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “You two’s headed out to that New Age commune, ain’t you?”

  “You know about that?”

  “Sure I do. Young folks like you are always stopping in here all eager-beaver and loading up on energy drinks.” The man slid my purchases toward me. “Never see any of ’em on the way back out, though.”

  I put the cigarettes in my purse and walked outside, locating the spot where Johnny was leaned up against a gas pump, slowly rocking back and forth. I slid in front of him and looped his arms around my waist. He rested his chin on top of my head and ran his hand across my stomach, tracing his high onto the flesh underneath my gauzy tank top. He dug his fingernails in and exhaled.

  “How you feeling?” I asked.

  “Goddamn fantastic,” Johnny replied.

  “Well then, I guess I’d better drive.”

  Back in the car, I raced above the speed limit as nighttime opened up around us. The sky turned black and became speckled with stars. I looked at it and tried to see something other than residue on a glossy coffee table after all the cocaine has been snorted up. Johnny stuck his head through the window and smelled whatever was out there. “You want to hear about the first time I saw stars?”

  “Mm-hmm,” I said. “As long as you don’t turn it into a country song.”

  EXT. FERRIS WHEEL – MORNING

  Leila removes her head from Johnny’s shoulder. They’re rotating slowly through the air. The Ferris wheel creaks and moans like a demonic basset hound.

  LEILA

  Should we get up now?

  Johnny murmurs. Opens his eyes and looks out over the edge of the cart. Young people walk around in various states of undress, high-fiving each other and cooking breakfast.

  JOHNNY

  How about just one more time around?

  LEILA

  Yeah. Or two.

  On the floor we see a burned spoon and strips of bloody cotton.

  The glowing Ferris wheel was the first thing Johnny and I had seen for miles that wasn’t a cactus or a menacing rock formation lurking in silence up against the horizon. It was the dead of night by the time we pulled up to the rickety wooden base that, even with the machine turned off, seemed to struggle under the weight of all those metal carts. Taking in the half-built structures and signs of fresh hooliganism, we figured this must be the camp we were looking for. We were surprised by all the quiet, however; we had expected a perpetual party fueled by glow sticks and pills and various other up-all-night synthetics.

  We parked our car off to the side of the main road and walked back to the camp through the dusty silence of the desert. Something howled off in the distance, and I shivered despite myself. Johnny laughed. “You spooked?”

  “I didn’t expect it to be so damn quiet,” I said. “I don’t do very well with quiet.”

  Johnny put his thin arm over my shoulder and pulled me toward him. The creature howled with double vigor. “Girlie, whatever’s out there is more afraid of you than you are of it.”

  “That’s bullshit. For all we know, that could be some teenage werewolf, driven to bloodlust by raging hormones and Red Bull.”

  “And for all the werewolf knows, we could have shotguns.”

  “Why didn’t we bring shotguns?”

  Johnny and I entered the camp quietly, stepping over empty whiskey bottles, bicycles, and discarded articles of clothing. All the various living structures—tents, makeshift shacks, a few trailers—were set up in a large circle. One enormous and roughly crafted picnic table sat in the middle of it all, flanked by two long benches hand-painted in Day-Glo colors. An empty pizza box from God-knows-what-kind of delivery system was being licked over by a small white cat, and half-full bottles of wine idled on the table. Still, there wasn’t a single sign of waking human life. It was as if the whole camp had been beamed away into outer space by a gang of aliens with a raging case of the munchies.

  Johnny pulled the little cat off the pizza box and held it in his hands. He seemed as baffled as I was by the emptiness. “This is definitely the right place?”

  “Neon tents, fixed-gear bikes, skateboards . . .”

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Unless we stumbled into the aftermath of an Urban Outfitters catalog shoot, I imagine this is the only spot of its kind out here in Desert Nowhere.”

  “Well, maybe that howling werewolf ate everyone up.”

  “See any duct tape around?” I turned toward Johnny and raised the most menacing fist I could muster. “Or am I going to have to sew your mouth shut with cactus pricks?”

  Johnny grabbed me by the arm and spun me in a circle. I looked into his green eyes, which shined like a “go” signal in the moonlight, feeling the desert rolling around me. I leaned forward and shoved my tongue down Johnny’s throat. He put his hands around my hips and squeezed downward, like he wanted to hold the entirety of me between two fingers.

  Still carrying the little cat, Johnny walked over to the table and picked up one of the labelless bottles of blood-red merlot. He sniffed it and grabbed another. He handed me one of the bottles and held his own up in a toast. “To a pair of functioning drug addicts, alone in the middle of Bizarro Siberia.”

  Johnny’s sudden honesty after a car ride full of avoidance and innuendo took me aback. My first instinct was to deny, to get indignant and claim I didn’t know what he was talking about. In my head, I ran through a list of excuses: all the work I had to do, the pressure, the timetables, the “what business is it of yours, anyway.” I thought of accusations I could throw back his way: at least I wasn’t shooting the family-size pack of heroin
every day and hiding my arms under jackets in the dead of summer. But what would the point of that be? I was a drug addict, and lying about it would just make me seem all the more desperate.

  So I clinked bottles with Johnny and took a long, messy swill of wine. “Is it that obvious?” I asked.

  Johnny just laughed. I took the white cat from him and rubbed it behind the ears. “How long have you been shooting dope?”

  “A while. Long enough that I don’t remember what I’m like without it.”

  “And you’re just honest about it?”

  “No,” Johnny said, shrugging. “Not really.”

  “Yeah,” I said, and closed my eyes. There was too much goddamn quiet everywhere, and it was driving me crazy. “Where the fuck are we?”

  Johnny wanted to commandeer a tent and pass out for the night, but I figured it would come as an unwelcome surprise if the kids returned to find us huddled up in one of their houses—and we needed them to like us. We talked about sleeping in the car, if only to experience life as sardines doused in tobacco. Rejecting that, I pointed to the Ferris wheel.

  “It’s practically a boutique hotel,” Johnny said, and climbed into one of the carts. He reached his arm down, and I handed him the cat. Then he pulled me up. I unrolled my jacket and set it out on the bench. Something else howled in the distance: a different, angrier-sounding thing. I was wired and on edge from these unfamiliar desert sounds. If the noises around me had been coming from an ambient sleep machine, I would have hurled the thing at the wall, stepped on it with a booted foot, and put on Sticky Fingers instead.

  Johnny settled onto the bench and opened the small tan backpack he’d kept close to his side all day. He pulled out his rig and spoon and looked at me carefully. “Do you mind if I do this here? I can go somewhere else if it bugs you.”

  I shook my head and took out my ponytail. “You don’t care if I watch?”

  “Nah, if it’s okay with you.”

  I nodded and popped gum into my mouth to murder the acidic taste of the long day. Johnny undid his belt and wrapped it around his bicep. He carefully measured water and tapped a chunk of brown tar into his spoon, heating it all with a lighter. He let the mixture absorb into a cotton ball and sucked it up into his syringe. Then he shot himself in the arm.