by C. J. Howell
When Hailey went shopping she never bought much. She was particular. The mall was considered upscale: Tiffany’s, Max Maura, Gucci, and the obligatory Victoria’s Secret. The mall was crowded, and few looked like they could afford the shops, but it was impossible to tell. This was a town where teenagers in shredded jeans and wife-beater tank tops drove Hummers. She was amazed at how crowded the Louis Vuitton store was. She waited twenty minutes to get the salesgirl’s attention at the counter. She looked at an oversized handbag for $980 but ultimately passed. She had something special in mind, and she found it at Neiman Marcus on the mall’s ground floor. A pair of Christian Louboutins, black satin platform pumps with the signature red soles and five-inch stiletto heals, costing almost $800. She put them on her MasterCard, admired the pretty package and the merlot colored bag that she would carry proudly with her the rest of the day. She left supremely satisfied.
She wandered into Ra, a sushi bar with outdoor seating covered by misters which made the outside habitable, and took a bar stool at a small round table. She ordered tuna sashimi and a sake bomb. She people watched for five minutes, busying herself with her Blackberry and feeling self conscious until the waitress brought her a small white jar of sake and a twenty ounce Kirin beer that she’d ordered and made it all better.
She allowed herself to put the Blackberry in her bag and let her eyes drift to the flatscreen over the outdoor bar where SportsCenter silently fought a losing battle against the sun’s glare. A creature came out and stood flat against the doorframe. She was in a knit cap with earflaps and a dated windbreaker and looked for someone who wasn’t in there or never existed. Anyone who noticed avoided eye contact. The creature paced awkwardly, ducked her head, looked ashamed, and left. Afterwards a kitchenman followed her out. She had not gone far. He said something to her and she stood dumbly, comprehendingly, waved a meek acknowledgment and continued into the wasteland.
Something to love. Wasn’t that it? Hailey filled her little ceramic cup with sake and drank it in long sips.
She watched two men in suits sitting just outside the perimeter of shade the umbrellas provided, the man farthest from the misters looking clearly uncomfortable. One man shoved a clumsily folded wad of bills at the other to cover the check safely ensconced in a black leather valet. The other man held up his hand and threw down his plastic. The first man stuffed his bank roll back into the pocket of his cramped slacks, barely concealing his relief.
Two young women with tattooed arm sleeves and various metal studs gleaming in the sun took a different approach to the check, gesticulating wildly, arms crossing and uncrossing, hands running through heavily gelled hair. Hailey busied herself with her beer chaser. Nothing more depressing than lesbians arguing about money.
The scene made her more uncomfortable then she already was. If a casual observer could innocently watch this scene and read those people’s thoughts then what were people thinking about her? She could hear their thoughts. Poor sad girl, alone, with the weird walk. Sad. Sad. And she thought she was hot. She’d been told she was hot. Was it a lie? Did it matter? No, it didn’t. Hot and lonely, hoping one of these red-faced recently divorced lawyers with man-boobs nipping through sweat damp polo shirts would offer to buy her a drink. Sad. She realized there must be some here who wanted to but wouldn’t because of the sheer awkwardness of the situation. Sad. And that she wanted one to. Sad. Only the biggest asshole would hit on her in a place like this. Someone who didn’t care if they were bothering someone else or not, if they looked like a fool or not. Like inverse natural selection. She was doomed to only meet the biggest assholes. That explained a lot.
She shook her head involuntarily and left dangling a shoe by her finger. She walked quickly through the mall and down the tinted glass encased walkway to the hotel. In the artificial cool and quiet of her room she left the lights off. In the half-light of the approaching night, she stood looking out the floor to ceiling windows at the auburn swath of sky between the dolloped mountains where the sun had been. Scottsdale Boulevard filled with headlights, and the overhead halogens cast conical tubes of white light on the pavement.
Even from the height of the hotel in the fading light, she could see the goings on across the Boulevard. She watched some young prostitutes slovenly congeal in a group and then fan out into the night. That was how it had to be she supposed, one must be coveted and one must covet. Could just as easily be the other way around she supposed, women pulling up in cars and paying the men. It just turned out this way instead. And then she thought of her own situation. She wanted to get laid, but she didn’t want to be paid for it. She didn’t know what to make of the irony.
Chapter 23
The Malibu was not aerodynamic. Even less so with the windows down, hot air vibrating the metal hulk, periodically shifting the internal pressure like a helicopter was hovering just overhead. It battered its way through wind resistance at eighty miles an hour by sheer brute strength, the engine roaring louder than the stereo so a blanket of noise enveloped them in an ever growing numbness. The world was being born, reborn, and destroyed every second. Pammy, Jimmy, and Lorne had ridden benders before and knew the only thing to do was to see where it goes and assess the damage later. It would end eventually. Or it wouldn’t. Ashley and Junior in the backseat weren’t thinking about it at all. Besides, there was no place to get off this ride anyway.
The scenery along the interstate was somehow blander than the dramatic spires of playdough sandstone, red rock gorges, and cactus forest desert scape that they’d burrowed through on the narrow two-lane state highways, but on the interstate the spaces seemed three hundred and sixty degrees wide open, infinite, impenetrable, so that after three hours of hard sunburnt driving, Lorne felt like they’d travelled nowhere, even though in reality, or at least the dim indicia of it, they’d covered over two hundred miles and were solidly in the western part of the state, not far from the Grand Canyon. With space and distance immeasurable and lacking consistency, time also lost its structure, and if not for the ancient yellow gas gage indicator light and its irrefutable logic, they may have kept driving until their innards exploded and buried them in their own piss and shit.
Lorne saw a town up ahead. A brown spot off the interstate identifiable by a cluster of sickly palms. At least a gas station and a motel. Two of the three essentials. The third being meth, prodigiously smoked. Which they had. And they smoked. Prodigiously. The Malibu braked unevenly on one pad down to the quick, and the other slick with leaking brake fluid. The feeling mimicked Lorne’s heartbeat, three beats on, one beat off, as the car took the off-ramp at a fifteen degree angle off-center due to the beating the alignment had taken in the last three days, the last thirty years. The Malibu coasted the long arc of the off-ramp with precision, Lorne’s concentration heightened by the immediacy of purpose. The sun hit the windshield like a razor blade pendulum illuminating the rock-born spider bites in the shatterproof glass.
The narrow frontage road was lined by tall yellow grass brittled by the sun. Each gap in the grass was marked by a red swath of dirt, dust, and sand blown across the road by a constant crosswind. The road was calm compared to the chaos of the interstate, but it only served to punctuate the strung out edginess palpable in the Malibu. The gas station was a rickety affair off the frontage road with a rusted Pennzoil sign that slapped against a metal pole with the wind like a door being slammed in anger. They spilled out of the car and drifted aimlessly in the parking lot. A twenty appeared in Lorne’s hand for gas, at least it seemed to him that it had just appeared there, but after a moment he thought that it might have come from Ashley. He didn’t think about where she’d gotten it from or why she’d given it to him. He put twenty in the tank and paid without making eye contact with the clerk. Out the age-smeared window he saw Junior standing in the middle of the parking lot, staring at something in the distance. Jimmy walked in little circles while Pammy squatted and took a piss by the side of the building. Ashley waited in the back seat of the Malibu, her pretty fa
ce staring straight ahead. He could still hear traffic from the interstate, but mostly he heard the wind.
On the road again, Lorne felt an intolerable jittery twitch in his legs and fingertips and a sudden feeling of dread. He needed a drink. The frontage road intersected with a county road, and at the corner was a motel with a crushed quartz rotund encircling a stand of palm trees. The Malibu crunched over the white shards of fill with a satisfying sound as it pulled into the driveway. A Budweiser sign hung in the lobby window. The motel was two stories, yellow stucco with a Spanish-tiled roof, decorated with cow skulls and cactus. Old tires had been sunk halfway into the ground to mark the parking spaces. Two wagon wheels flanked the lobby entrance. The palm trees circled a faux oasis, a kiddy pool sized brackish pond filled in with weeds and grass. The desiccated palm fronds rustled rhythmically in the wind. Lorne got them a room on the second floor with more of Ashley’s money, and they went upstairs. Lorne silently thanked God the place had a bar, but first he needed to party. He was sure they had one last gasp before whatever crash was coming.
In the room, the pipe was passed and the weight was lifted. They took serious hits, the hits of no return. Lorne went outside and set his arms on the railing of the second story slab. Inside the motel room, Jimmy and Pammy were taking hits and blowing the white smoke into each other’s mouths, recycling. He bet Junior and Ashley were somewhere doing the same. He didn’t know when, but the sky had turned a rich lavender. The silhouette of arid barren mountains cut black against the darkening pastel sky. Lorne lit a cigarette. The air was soft and almost moist. His skin tingled instead of itched. Cast iron lanterns came on below. Amber glowed from the glass-encased bulbs meant to mimic candlelight. The rustle of the palm trees seemed exotic, like he was being transported. But he was here, and not here. He inhaled deeply and watched the cigarette smoke fan out into oblivion. He laughed once, liked the feel of it, and then laughed full out loud. He’d done it, he’d gotten away with murder. Of course he hadn’t murdered anyone, but that’s not the way the law would see it. But here he was, feeling the expanse of the night, every cell tingling. The stars came out like blurs there to make you dizzy, points of reference whose only purpose was to show you that solid ground did not exist. Expecting the motel room door to be the thick hacienda black stained wood it pretended to be, Lorne pushed too hard on the cheap plywood and it flew back against the doorstop and bounced back at him but he caught it. He was ninja fast. Pammy and Jimmy looked up with vague recognition, the pipe in mid pass. He didn’t have to say anything. Jimmy took a hit and then beckoned him forward. Lorne spread his lips, and Jimmy blew a fountain of smoke into his mouth. Lorne inhaled and then stumbled with thumbs up around the room and into the bathroom. To his surprise, Ashley was just finishing on the toilet. He grabbed the back of her neck and pushed his mouth on hers and forced the smoke from his lungs into hers. She inhaled and held it there with a look that gave both reprimand and hope. Lorne tried to finish the transfer by leaving his lips on her mouth, but she put a hand on his chipmunk chest, pushing him away without actually pushing. She looked up, her eyes a cold gray blue that made Lorne’s stomach drop with ache. Her beauty was physically painful. It occurred to him that the only reason he was this close to such a beautiful girl was the meth, and he thanked God for it, again. This was what life was all about. The validation of all his drunken philosophies. His bullshit. He knew it was bullshit. But she was real. Probably not legal, but real. He tried to kiss her again, and again she put her hand on his chest. Her hair had lanky curls with highlights that shown iridescent in the florescent bathroom light, an unnatural sheen that smelled great, like rich people’s spa treatments. He touched her arm just below the shoulder. It was silken skin. He outlined the faint trace of a tricep with his middle finger while running his thumb across the more defined bulge of her bicep. She stared involuntarily at his crotch. He tried for a third time to kiss her, and this time she stopped him with just one arched eyebrow and a little knowing smirk. He took a half step back and followed her gaze to his own crotch. He stared at it with her. He felt like she was talking, but she wasn’t. She was laying bare the mysterious well of horniness and shame. Daring him to go there. And his cock felt like the touchstone of life. He felt it through his jeans and it made him weak in the knees.
Yeah, she said.
He unzipped and took it out. At least as best he could. It was all shrunken and withdrawn from days of meth but it felt great. Suddenly, out in the open he couldn’t stop touching it. She leaned back against the toilet and smiled. He started pulling it in earnest.
That’s it.
She looked in the mirror and laughed.
Lorne was too far gone to stop. This was no erection whatsoever, but somehow that added to the thrill of it. Just a little bald head and bunched up skin. Like a clitoris. He rubbed it with his palm and it felt better than any purple rocket he’d ever had. It actually made his legs buckle. He groaned involuntarily. Mewing in spite of himself. He didn’t want to take it that far. Nobody wants to mew. But he couldn’t help it. He couldn’t help anything now.
For some reason she focused on the cheap motel soap sitting slimily next to the faucet that someone had unwrapped and used and then she looked into the mirror at Lorne masturbating furiously and felt her hips rocking back and forth on the toilet seat. She caught Lorne’s eyes with her stunning grays and guided them to the soap. The bar of soap was pink and deeply cracked and ridged, more like a luffa or a pumice stone. Lorne put it under the faucet and rolled it in his hands, noticing for the first time that his palms were desiccated and calloused from the days of partying, and skin that should have been soft, or at least smooth, formed deep valleys and was as rutted and hard as the long suffering bar of soap. He worked up a thin lather and used it to rub his drug-shrunken cock. The girl watched this display with a sardonic smile. Her big eyes and arched eyebrows said ‘really?’ but there was nothing in the look that said ‘stop’ or even ‘slow down’. The greasy trail of lube from the soap felt like a hot wet mouth to Lorne, and he moaned like a woman.
The bathroom door opened unceremoniously, and Junior took a step in the dim yellowed room, unbuckling his jeans to piss when he saw them. He saw them in the mirror first upon entering, and then he looked at Ashley sitting on the toilet and Lorne with the cock in his hand and then looked back in the mirror, not really sure what he was seeing and trying to decipher reality. Lorne buttoned up quick. This was weird, even for him. He ducked out of the room without washing the slime off his hands.
Ashley looked stunned, her supple pale face blanched a degree whiter if that was possible, her demeanor totally changed. Reality hit her in an instant — this boy — the murder, Bullfrog Frank, her phone buzzing and vibrating with texts even now, Chevis with an arrow sticking out of his chest, Lorne masturbating like a deranged chimpanzee, and these Indians and the glass pipe and wherever they were going and whatever apocalypse they were trying to stop — this boy.
Before Junior could say anything stupid, or worse, do anything stupid, Ashley stood up off the can and with her panties still around her ankles shuffled to Junior and threw her arms around his neck, and she kissed him harder and deeper then he’d ever been kissed.
Lorne went straight through the room, passed Jimmy and Pammy spooning in the bed and opened the door out into the night. It was hot and humid in the room and hotter outside. The sky was purple with thin orange clouds and stars that blinked like the Christmas lights strung loosely in the palm trees lining the driveway. He lit a cigarette and hung his arms over the balcony railing and exhaled deeply.
Fuck.
He walked across the balcony and down the stairs and pushed open the door to the hotel lobby. As promised, there was a bar in the back guarded by a black curtain and a sign that read ‘Caballeros’. Inside it was a single room with three booths along one side, a mishmash of tables in the middle, and a sturdy oak bar with a long bottle-lined mirror on the other side. One of the booths was occupied by a Mexican couple sitting
next to each other on the same side of the booth and talking in whispers. An old guy at the end of the bar picked his head up when Lorne walked in and then looked back down. The bartender dangled a cigarette out one side of his mouth. The only other person at the bar was a leggy blonde stabbing a cocktail straw into a vodka tonic like she was trying to punish the lime wedge for all the crimes of her past.
Chapter 24
Bullfrog Frank hit the I-40 and stopped for breakfast at Tony’s Truck Town. He pushed open the glass door and was startled and then annoyed by the bell that tinkled overhead. The clatter of forks and knives on plates slicing through eggs over easy and flapjacks stopped when he entered. He felt for the dying flap of skin dangling from his neck and tucked it into the bandage he’d made for himself. He sat at one of the fake wood tables and pulled out a metal chair so violently it almost eluded his grip and flew across the room. He ordered what everyone was eating—eggs, bacon, wheat toast, potatoes, and coffee. The waitress, a chubby girl just out of high school reluctantly took the order. She stood two yards back, her mouth agape, staring at the oozing wound on his neck.
How do you want those eggs?
He pushed his sunglasses onto his forehead. His eyes were red.
How do I want them? He smiled wide.
That’s funny.
What do you mean, mister?
The farmers and truckers shuffled in their seats.
