Torch

by Roxie Noir

  I take a deep breath.

  “Yeah,” I say. “We, uh...”

  I don’t know where to start. I don’t know if I start with a bottle of Boone’s Farm in a pickup truck, or if I start at Pioneer Days, or if I start when he called me a week later.

  “We started seeing each other in Oklahoma,” I say, because that seems like as good an introduction as any. I go through the phone calls, the texting, mention that I’ve been visiting Jackson after-hours here in Vegas. I show him the pictures on my phone: Flossie, sunsets, tractors, fields. Jackson’s cute nephews.

  He believes me by the end.

  “I know you warned me,” I say.

  “I tried,” he says.

  Sushi comes, and we start eating in silence. Incredibly, it makes me feel a little better.

  “Am I fucked?” I ask Bruce.

  More scenes flash through my mind: freaking out in the media area. Causing a scene backstage.

  “I don’t know,” Bruce says. “I can only tell you what I think you should do.”

  I wait.

  “Call your editor, Erica,” he says. “The minute the offices open in New York, and tell her everything. It’ll go better if she hears it from you first.”

  I chew on my thumb and nod.

  “If you just went back to New York tomorrow morning, you could probably get away with it,” Bruce says. “You and Jackson became friends at Pioneer Days, so it’s natural that you had a reaction to him getting injured.”

  “I can’t just go back,” I whisper.

  “I’m just laying out the options,” he says. “I didn’t think you would.”

  He pauses, chopsticks hovering over his plate, and looks at me.

  “You’re a good photographer, Mae,” he says. “That should be the first thing people think when they hear your name. Not something else.”

  Something else meaning sleeps with the people she’s photographing, I assume.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  After dinner, Bruce makes a phone call and somehow gets more information. Jackson’s still in surgery. I go to my room and try to watch TV, but I can’t. I end up taking a long walk down the strip, wandering through casino after casino. I’ll take any loud, horrible, flashing distraction to get my mind off of what’s happening.

  I wonder if Jackson is waking up from surgery and no one’s there, and then I just pray that he’s waking up. At midnight, I find a number for the hospital and call, but I can’t get anyone to answer my questions. I wander back to the hotel. I change my flight to one four days from now, because that seems like as good a time as any. It costs four hundred dollars and I put it on my credit card, praying that I get paid for this job before my rent is due on the first.

  Then I make myself lay in my bed and shut my eyes.

  Every time I drift off to sleep, I see it again: Jackson on the ground, Crash Junction galloping toward him. I wake up with a jolt. At five a.m., I give up. I call the hospital again, uselessly, so I shower and find their visiting hours. They start at eight.

  I text Bruce a single question mark, because he seems to be the only person who can find anything out.

  At 5:50, I sit at the table in my room and look out the window. I’ve got a view of the block behind the strip, facing east. There’s not much to look at, just the horizon starting to turn pink and gray since the sun hasn’t come up yet.

  Call her and tell her, I think.

  I don’t want to. There’s a tiny part of me that thinks, somehow, we can keep this a secret until I’m done with the job. That somehow I can see Jackson in the hospital and not have everyone know.

  But Bruce was right, of course. My options are go back to New York or fess up.

  At 5:59, I hold my breath. When the clock says 6:00 — 9:00 on the east coast — I pick it up and dial Erica. Her assistant picks up on the first ring, and when I tell her who it is, she puts me through right away.

  “What’s happening out there?” Erica says. “Any word?”

  “Last I knew, Jackson was in surgery and it sounded pretty serious,” I say. My throat’s closing up. “I don’t know what’s happening right now. Also we’ve been dating for the past month.”

  There’s a long pause.

  “You and Jackson?” she says.

  “Yes,” I say, and then I spill the whole story. I start with Oklahoma but I end up going back to the bonfire party, then to Oklahoma, then to Vegas, then to the middle part, and it’s a goddamn mess.

  Through the whole thing, Erica just says, “I see,” over and over, and I have no idea what that means.

  I finish. There’s a long pause.

  “Thank you for telling me first,” she says, but her voice is rigid. “Though I wish I’d known sooner.”

  “I apologize,” I say, and hope my voice isn’t shaking. “I’ll still have the pictures to you by Tuesday.”

  “That would be excellent,” she says. “I’ll have to get back to you about everything else, Mae.”

  When we hang up the phone, Bruce has texted me back.

  He’s out.

  I grab pants, pull my hair into a ponytail, and leave.

  His room is in the ICU, which isn’t surprising. The doors to it are badge-operated and don’t have windows, so I can’t even see in. When I bother the nurse at the front desk she very firmly tells me that visiting hours start at eight, and there’s no one even at the desk outside the ICU yet.

  I don’t know what to do, so I drink coffee in the hospital cafeteria. It’s not good coffee, but at least I won’t have a headache later.

  He’s alive, I think. It’s been twelve hours, and he’s alive, and that’s good.

  I have no idea what else could happen. Internal bleeding sounds pretty bad, and shattered leg sounds pretty bad, and hell, everything sounds bad. I construct scenarios in my head, one after the other: he dies suddenly, still in the hospital. He’s paralyzed from the neck down. From the waist down. He’s in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. He’s got serious brain damage and doesn’t know who I am.

  At 7:45, I make myself stop and go back upstairs. At 8:00 exactly, someone comes and sits down at the ICU reception desk, and I go up to her.

  “Hi, I’m here to see Jackson Cody,” I say.

  She looks at a list.

  “You family?” she asks.

  I stare for a second, and I panic.

  “I’m his sister,” I hear myself say.

  She looks down again.

  “His parents didn’t clear a sister,” she says.

  “Mom and Dad are really shaken up right now,” I say. “They probably forgot. Please, just let me go see him.”

  She shakes her head.

  “Sorry,” she says.

  Desperation wells up in me, and I try to tamp it down.

  It’s important that he’s alive, I tell myself. You seeing him is secondary.

  “Are his parents in there now?” I ask. “Can you call his room?”

  “I’m not calling,” she says.

  “Please?”

  She just looks at me.

  “Look, I don’t know who you are—”

  The ICU doors open, and a woman with short gray hair steps through. She’s fit and no-nonsense looking, with a paisley shirt tucked into high-waisted jeans. She’s got bloodshot hazel eyes.

  She looks at me, then looks away.

  Then she looks at me again.

  “Mrs. Cody?” I ask.

  “Yes,” she says, then frowns slightly. “Are you Mae?”

  I just nod, and before I know it, she’s hugging me.

  “It’s nice to finally meet you,” she says. “I wish circumstances were different.”

  “Me too,” I say.

  She leads me back to the ICU doors.

  “She’s with me,” Jackson’s mom tells the woman.

  “That your daughter?” the woman asks, a little sarcastically.

  Jackson’s mom looks at me.

  “Sure,” she says.

  The ICU hall is quiet ex
cept for beeping. Mrs. Cody is a little taller than me and walks fast, then stops suddenly outside a room.

  “You haven’t seen him yet,” she says.

  “No,” I say.

  “It’s still touch-and-go,” she says. “He looks bad, Mae. His face is all busted up, he’s covered in casts, and he can’t really move. Plus, he’s on a heavy morphine drip, so he’s not quite all there right now.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  She gives me a hard look.

  “No one would blame you if you turned back,” she says, her voice sinking almost to a whisper. “He’s got a long hard road ahead, and if you want out, now is the time.”

  I stare at her. It hadn’t even occurred to me that I might leave Jackson.

  “I don’t want out,” I say.

  She nods once, curtly.

  “Good,” she says. “He likes you.”

  Then she opens the door to his room, and I take a deep breath.

  “I found a stray,” Mrs. Cody says, and I walk through the door.

  He’s fucked up.

  Jackson’s got casts on both legs, bandages around his torso, a neck brace, a black eye, and a split lip. There are tubes and wires sticking out of him everywhere, both forearms and the backs of both hands.

  But he’s alive.

  I just start laughing. I’m giddy with relief and joy and happiness, and his eyes slide toward me.

  “Izzat Mae?” he asks. He sounds like his voice box has been through a wood chipper.

  “It’s me,” I say.

  At the side of his bed I grab his fingers and hold them in mine, because that seems like the only part that’s safe to touch. I want to throw my arms around him, I want to kiss him. I want to hold him tight, but that’s all a spectacularly bad idea right now.

  His fingers curl into mine.

  “Hey,” he whispers.

  27

  Jackson

  I’m ninety-five percent confident this isn’t another morphine dream, that Mae’s really here. I can’t see great, but I can hear her laughing and it sounds like she’s trying not to cry.

  She takes my fingers, which is pretty much the only part of me that isn’t busted. I squeeze her hand.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” she says, her voice not much more than a whisper. “How are you?”

  I lick my lips. I can’t move my head, I broke a shitload of bones, and I’m high as fuck right now.

  “I’m fine,” I say. “You know I won?”

  “Of course I know you won,” she says. “I got a great shot of you winning.”

  There was something I was going to say to her. I close my eyes and try really, really hard to remember, but my memories are scattered and fragmented.

  “Lula-Mae,” I start.

  Landing in the sand wrong. Crash coming on. Trying to get up and nearly blacking out from the pain. Waking up in the sand, gasping for air, feeling like I was breathing through a straw, my whole body hurting more than I thought possible.

  A stretcher, an ambulance, a bed. People kept telling me things but I have no idea what.

  I know I had surgery, because I remember being awake and on the table and then feeling like I was falling backward into darkness and not even being afraid, just wondering what was under there.

  Then I was here, and my parents were here, and I couldn’t really move but I was pretty sure I was alive, though every so often I’d think I was talking to someone and their face would start to twist and morph. Always into sea creatures, for some reason, but they’d keep talking and after a few minutes I’d wake up.

  “There’s no brain damage?” Mae says.

  I squeeze her hand.

  “What?” I say.

  She looks down at me.

  “There you are,” she says.

  “I’m on drugs,” I say, and she just laughs.

  “You fell asleep for a few minutes in the middle of your sentence,” she says.

  “That isn’t brain damage, that’s just morphine,” my dad says. “They’ll taper him off it in four or five days and he’ll be a little more lucid.”

  I remember what it was that was so important.

  “Mae,” I say.

  “Yes?” she asks, her thumb rubbing over my knuckles.

  “I didn’t break my dick,” I tell her. “I think.”

  She turns so bright red that her face is nearly purple, and the room goes dead quiet.

  Then someone moves, off to my right, and my mom stands up. I’d already forgotten that my parents were there.

  “We’re going to go get some coffee,” my mom says.

  “You want anything, Mae?” my dad asks, getting up slowly. He puts his fists on his lower back and stretches.

  “No, thank you,” Mae says, still beet-red. “It was very nice to meet you!”

  “We’ll be back in a few,” my mom says, and then they leave.

  Mae leans over and kisses me. She’s very, very gentle, and with the morphine I feel a little dizzy.

  “You scared the hell out of me,” she whispers.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  She squeezes my fingers again, and I realize she’s crying. I try to raise my arm so I can wipe her tears away, but pain shoots through me and I drop it.

  Mae wipes her face with the back of her hand, and with her this close, I can finally see her face. Her eyes are puffy and red, deep circles under them. Like she’s been crying hard for hours.

  “It’s okay,” I say, and rub my fingers against hers. “It’s gonna be okay.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I’m not even the one who’s hurt.”

  “It’s better when you’re here,” I say.

  She kisses me again, her hair a curtain between me and the world.

  I want to say I never wanted to make you cry, but I think I drift off to sleep again, because when I wake up, she’s curled in an armchair on the other side of my bed, my other hand in hers. I squeeze it and she bends over to kiss it very, very lightly.

  “My parents were here when I told you about my dick,” I say.

  “They were,” Mae says. “That was about ten minutes after I met them for the first time. Good job.”

  “Help me make sure it works?” I ask, my voice sounding fuzzy even to my own ears.

  Half the dreams I keep having are sex dreams, sort of. In one of them Mae’s naked and walking down a hotel hallway, away from me, and I keep walking after her but she never gets to the end and I never get closer. In another one she’s on the other side of a window, looking at me, and she keeps taking off her clothes, but there’s always another layer underneath.

  She laughs.

  “Not a chance,” she says. “For starters, I think you’re too high to give meaningful consent.”

  “I definitely consent,” I say.

  My bed’s got rails on it, and she’s leaning over one.

  “You’ve also got hairline fractures in four vertebrae and you’re peeing through a catheter,” she says.

  “Sounds gross,” I say.

  “It is,” Mae says.

  My vision’s getting a little blurry around the edges, and I think I’m starting to drift off again. Mae leans her head against the rail over my bed. I just watch her for a long moment, until everything starts to wobble.

  I remember what I wanted to tell her.

  “I love you,” I say.

  Mae’s head turns into an octopus.

  When I wake up this time, the sun has moved and Mae is gone, but my parents are back in the room.

  “She left?” I ask. I move my fingers, just in case she’s there and I can’t see her.

  “She was fast asleep in that chair so we made her go rest,” my dad says, lowering the copy of Guns & Ammo he’s reading. “Blame us.”

  “By the way, as far as the hospital is concerned, she’s your sister,” my mom says.

  Well, I’m not doing sex stuff for a while, so I can probably act brotherly. More or less.

  “I like her,” my mo
m says. “She’s nice, and she takes good pictures of you.”

  We watch some daytime TV. I drift in and out. Nurses feed me nutritional shakes through a straw and come in and mess with all my tubes and machines and IV drips.

  At one point, I think, I’m glad I’m so high, because this is pretty embarrassing, and also I think I might be in a lot of pain.

  Later, I wake up and Mae is sitting there, my parents on either side of her. She’s got her laptop on her lap, and she’s pointing at something.

  “I think this one’s a better angle,” my mom says. “Wow, there are just so many of these.”

  “Picking ten out of a thousand is always the hard part,” Mae says. “Well, one of them.”

  “Did you go to school for this?” my mom asks.

  “I got my BFA at UT Austin,” Mae says.

  “Are you from Texas?” my mom says.

  “I grew up about an hour from Odessa,” Mae says.

  I have the feeling that my mom is about to start grilling Mae about everything she’s done in her entire life, and even though I can’t do much, I can save her from that for another ten minutes.

  “You don’t have to interview her,” I say.

  “We were just looking at her photos of you,” my mom says. “They’re very good.”

  “Thanks,” Mae says.

  I hear her laptop shut and she comes over and stands by the bed again, taking my hand.

  “Visiting hours are over in a couple minutes,” she says. “I’ll be back tomorrow, okay?”

  I think we’re still in Vegas. I think she has to leave, and I think maybe she was supposed to leave today.

  “Tomorrow?” I say.

  “It’s the thing that happens after tonight,” she says.

  Mae leans over and kisses me softly.

  “Wait,” I say, before she straightens up, so her face is a couple inches in front of mine.

  “What?” she whispers.

  My dad clears his throat. Right. They’re there.

  “Tell you tomorrow,” I say.

  28

  Mae

  I’ve moved from the Wynn to a Motel 6 near the hospital, the cheapest thing I could find, and I head back there when visiting hours are over. Even though I told Jackson’s parents I’d go take a nap, I actually had to move my stuff to here, and I need a little while to just lie in the bed and stare at the ceiling.