Blood Highway

by Gina Wohlsdorf

  Bedroom door shutting, his steps down the steps. Beeps of an alarm system, and my own alarm system ringing a warning I didn’t understand. It demanded connections before vital input got lost. Two words.

  free tibet.

  Six

  3:35 a.m.

  I sensed yesterday at my back, but I couldn’t look. I lay there, thinking about how I wasn’t thinking about it. The clock refused to speed up, so I got out of bed, examining the room for signs Blaine had been in here, even benignly. The door was shut. Sliding glass to my left gave on a snowy deck, its patio furniture lumped white.

  My heartbeat was feathery. I was picturing Blaine on the other side of the door, psyching himself up, gathering the nerve to come inside.

  I went to the door, put my ear to it, and looked for the shadows of his feet in the bar of dull light at the bottom. I unlocked and opened it, thinking how funny rape-fear is, how rampant, because if you’re a girl who’s ever been to a public swimming pool, you’ve felt the stare of that stranger. He’s always there, and he changes faces, and he dreams it’s night and you’re by yourself. Loads of rapists only do it in their minds. They never bump into the perfect opportunity, but they imagine that opportunity tirelessly. I’d been aware of predators since my earliest memories. I wondered why, what special equipment I had.

  The house was a jungle gym of shadows as I moved down the upstairs landing, passing a linen closet, a tiny room with a writing table, a bathroom after that. I eyed the shut door at the landing’s far end. Blaine was asleep behind it. I could hear him. He didn’t exactly snore, but he was way under, greedy for air.

  Exploring his house was too tempting to pass up. Besides, it was only fair. He’d gotten to go through all my stuff while I’d chillaxed in the back of an ambulance. I went downstairs.

  The kitchen counter was empty. I opened his fridge. I’d assumed pizza, Chinese food, more pizza. The containers threw me. I opened the freezer, found the same. Tupperware were dated, with a cooked line and a toss by line. At once impressed and bummed, I closed the doors. No way I could sneak food without him knowing.

  I wandered to the living room, its window that gave on his street. I searched for hints of my street, pinpointing where it was by the Collins house, glowing like a fallen star. The police must have left. I turned and sat on the window’s narrow sill, taking in Blaine’s house from a new angle. Nothing reflected him. The carpet was ratty shag, clean but frayed, in need of replacing. The lamps and light fixtures were pretty Tiffany-style pieces with dangly crystals. I shopped his mom’s videos again. Hollywood’s golden age.

  I thought of Blaine opening a drawer in the desk for his cigarettes. Or his fridge, a Dewey decimal system of premade meals. He fit himself into nooks and crannies. All righty, then. At the bottom of the video shelves were five cabinets. I pulled one open.

  And found porn. A lot of porn. I had my middle-school giggly reaction and stamped it: He’s human, it’s normal, grow up.

  I went downstairs to the den, seeking refuge in a gentler medium. I rode my languor to the desk chair and sat, sagging my skull backward to the ergonomic cushion. The desktop was pin neat. Fifteen pigeonholes waited for correspondence. I reached into each of them expecting nothing. When I touched something, I knew before I pulled my hand out that I was holding money. Still, the denominations were a surprise. They were hundreds, a fat fold of them in a blue rubber band. I counted what I had. It was $3,100. The paper was crispy; the cash had been there awhile. Did he even know about it?

  I bent over the money, breathing hard. It filled the spaces between the bills, made them breathe with me. They whispered, “We belong together, Rainy.”

  I hunched over the desk. My hand fell deep into its recesses, where I touched metal. Until then, some small part of me believed he was lying, that his parents live in Florida, they golf every day, he’s just a lazy schmuck about redecorating. But the eight-by-ten photo shot those doubts to smithereens. Blaine looked maybe five. He was on his mom’s lap. She had Farrah hair. Her smile was like she was being scalded and trying not to scream. Dad had a hand on his wife’s shoulder, but he was seducing the living Toledo out of the camera. And Blaine, so heartbreakingly happy. Too young to be anything but oblivious.

  I put the picture back.

  I folded the money and put that back, too.

  I turned the chair. Which of us had it right? Blaine, who’d kept this house an altar to their toxic self-absorption? Who lived surrounded by the evidence, examining it for clues, hoping one day he’d figure it out. He’d devoted himself completely to building a tired, unoriginal, chauvinistic exterior—or, I strongly suspected, that exterior had been forced upon him. His interior was this packed, cluttered museum of guilt and regret. Did he really think a woman couldn’t see it? When he went up to her in a bar, said ‘Can I buy you a drink,’ did he honestly believe what she liked about him was his remoteness, his inability to truthfully engage? No. What she liked was the idea she could tease the decent man out from behind his douchebag pretense.

  So was it I who had it right? Eager enough to leave it all behind that I’d almost robbed the very rare human who could understand. If you’re raised by someone who basically lives two lives, you become awful in a way, because you’re always ready for anyone you meet to change. You gut-deep know that inside a person is the truth of that person, and the more they deny the truth of who they are, the darker and uglier that truth gets. You become determined to invert the paradigm, wear the worst of yourself on the outside, carry the best of yourself way down inside like a secret.

  Then I decide—or some knee-jerk imperative in me decides—to plunge my hand back into the desk’s hidey-hole, cram the cash in my pocket. And bust balls for upstairs and up more stairs and left and five feet, and there’s his door. And I’m huffing and puffing at it, like I want to blow it down. I’m seeing it happen as I stand still: going in, he’s on his back, so bland handsome, so asleep, and I pull my jeans off to give him less reaction time before straddling his lap.

  It hurts, right? The hymen snaps. What’s up with that, biology? Why make every girl’s first time into an endurance test for pain? Fuckever, my endurance was awesome. I was a distance runner. I’d ride him right past the pain.

  I sat down outside the door. I more oozed down—like that liquid bad guy in the second Terminator movie. Good movie; bad guy had an incredible ass. I put both hands over my mouth, eyes welling. I wanted that other life, the one where nobody knew where I came from. The one by the shore with so many footprints it looked like there weren’t any. If anyone made note of me at all, it’d be for a song I sang from a perch where they couldn’t see me, in an apartment where there was nothing to unpack.

  I listened to him sleeping. If I woke him, if I told him everything I wanted, down to that last detail—the space that had somewhere to rest, somewhere to read, and something to cook in—would he get it?

  I went to my room. I opened the closet and the dresser drawers and the drawers in the bathroom. They were all empty. They had smooth, stainless contact paper, waiting for contact with something. The shower smelled like lavender-scented ammonia, and both sinks’ fixtures shone.

  I wanted to go to Blaine’s door, open it, get under the covers with him, and beg. Plead for him to take it, take it from me, and tomorrow I’ll leave and you’ll never see me again. I promise. Please.

  Instead, I slid between the cozy sheets. My mom tried. She tried for a really long time. But, my God, I could feel it: the effort, the fatigue, the thin threads fraying. I wanted to tell her to quit, ease up, save herself. I didn’t have the words. They wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Nobody takes a five-year-old seriously.

  Nobody takes a seventeen-year-old seriously.

  Seven

  “Come on,” Blaine said, giving the horn a tap. He embarked on a complex circuit of turns, alleyways, and underpasses that shorted rush hour. The old Pillsbury factory and the sculpture gardens and the Loft passed in a whacked, unheard-of order. I got the sense he w
as showing off. “They’ll call this afternoon. I wanna say noon and not be lying, but I’d be lying.”

  “Okay.”

  “Someone from Child Protection Services will be waiting in the office after seventh period. They’ll escort you to a car.”

  “’Kay.”

  “I’m overseeing the situation. It’ll be a good place.” He waited for another syllable. At my silence, he turned down “Jungleland”—Blaine had picked the music this morning. “Why are you so quiet all of a sudden?”

  I chose a genuine concern. “Will you get in trouble? For harboring a fugitive last night?”

  “No.”

  “Are you lying?”

  “No, Rainy. I’m not. I say the right lines to the right people, and they assume your paperwork got lost.”

  “Kunz won’t.”

  “No. Kunz won’t.”

  I grinned at people in the passing yards, bright-coated kids holding moms’ manicured hands. The Nokomis housewives, all highlights and bangles and Uggs. “Could you let me out here?”

  Blaine pulled over, tires bouncing onto plowed snow. “Hang on,” he said. He took a block of rubber-banded cards from his pocket and slid one free. “This is me. Cell’s on the back. You need anything, call. I mean it, okay? Call collect.”

  “Thanks.” I put it in my back pocket. “Bye.”

  “I’ll check up on y—”

  I slammed the door. Climbing the drift, my running shoes punched through the crispy skin, into tender snow-meat. Blaine’s cruiser had similar trouble but lots more weight to work with. It preceded me up the street and away.

  The air smelled of ashes. It made me want a cigarette badly enough that I’d chewed two fingers to bleeding by the time I turned the corner. Dewey High shouldered above its veiny trees and a wide stream of cars. The clock above the main entrance showed four minutes ’til the bell.

  I went south to a coffeehouse on Franklin that did amazing things with cinnamon rolls, meaning they used way more icing than necessary. I chose a cushy seat by the fireplace and drank my coffee, debating my best route to the bus station and wondering how much the schedule had changed.

  But the thought of traveling wore me out—preemptively, like I’d already done it. Crossed a thousand-thousand miles and stayed awake the whole time.

  I took out his card. Sergeant Blaine Clay, Minneapolis Police Department, a work number. Cell in scribbly blue pen at the bottom with an arrow. I memorized the digits on the back and had a healthy laugh at my own expense.

  You want to call him, huh? Great. That’s great. And say what? “Blaine, what’s up? It’s been minutes. I swiped three large from your dad’s antique desk, but let’s chew the fat.”

  I put the card away, hunting for a distraction. The café had a newspaper bin, but as I stood and moved toward it, my entire body buttonhooked as if vetoing a terrible idea.

  Five seconds later, I was outside, walking downtown’s roomy grid—thinking, looking in store windows, fingering the cash in my pocket. I wanted that gray wool peacoat. I wanted this bedspread with the little blue flowers. I watched my shoes, in order to not watch the windows, and that was the wrong thing to do, because I needed new shoes.

  The notion of spending his money felt like some uncrossable Rubicon of sin. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t. I’d return it. I’d go to his precinct right now and—

  And? Slip it in his desk with a few dozen cops watching? Get an envelope, write his name on it, leave it with a secretary like the most backward Christmas present ever?

  I veered toward Central Library. I’d read awhile, mull it over. It’s not like I was on a time limit here. Nobody knew where I was; nobody cared. I could drop off the face of the earth and nobody would care. I found, as I neared Central’s layer-cake design, that I was almost running.

  Once inside, I went upstairs to the 900s, picking a bunch of titles I remembered from Blaine’s dad’s den. Sitting on the floor, making a nest. Alaric and the Visigoths. Kick-ass band name. I opened the book, and it instantly worked. Words took me far away.

  I didn’t look up until my stomach growled. The clock was doing vertical splits. It was dark outside.

  He was probably still at work. Not home by now, not yet. In between, driving? Don’t call him while he’s driving—he can just not answer, relax. I’d call him and I’d ask if he ever thought, driving home, that his dead mother would be there when he arrived. I absolutely needed to ask him if that’s why he kept the house.

  I went downstairs and passed the library’s information desk, where a beige woman was scanning bar codes. “You have a jacket, don’t you?” she said. “It’s supposed to get to twenty below tonight.”

  I didn’t answer, except to put my sweater on. A bare second later, cold bit me like a pit viper. I doubted the phone booth would be warm; it wasn’t. Picking up the receiver, it dawned on me that although I had over $3,000, none of it was change. I watched my scabby fingers dial 1-800-COLLECT. A nice robot lady asked my name, and I told her.

  “Rainy?” He sounded— Well, Blaine always sounded like that. “Are you there?”

  “Yeah. Yes.” I floundered and fell on etiquette. “Hi.”

  “Where are you?”

  “I’m—” I’m at the corner of Can’t Believe I Called and Crap I Take It Back. “I’m sorry. Sorry. I don’t know why I did this.”

  “Do not hang up!”

  “What’s wrong?” I looked outside at Fifth and Hennepin, I guess hoping Blaine would materialize out of thin air.

  “Listen to me. Did you cut school today?”

  I said nothing.

  “It’s okay if you did, but you need to tell me. Tell me right now.”

  My throat was corked. Why’d he care?

  “Did you cut school, yes or no!”

  “Yes! Yes, I fucking did—I’m not going into the system so Chester the Molester can hump me ’til I’m legal in seven fucking weeks!”

  “Rainy.”

  “You buy me some fucking pancakes and you think you’re my friend? Fuck you! I’m gonna forget she ever existed! I’m gonna go so fucking far away, you’re gonna forget—”

  “Rainy.”

  “—I ever existed!”

  “Stay where you are. Stay right there.”

  “What?”

  Hennepin is a mess in the best of times. Most of downtown’s one-ways feed into it. The two patrol cars headed for my corner were having a bear of a time making progress. One was southbound. The other came west. No whirly lights, no sirens. Stealthy.

  “Stay there, Rainy,” Blaine said.

  Another male voice, faint: “They see her.”

  I dropped the phone and ran. The crosswalk sign on Fifth advised don’t walk; I didn’t listen. A grille slammed to a stop inches from my legs, but by then I was already past it, into another near collision with a driver’s side and an openmouthed man making a careful left turn. He sat there stunned while I climbed over his hood. A pair of voices behind me cried, “Hey!” and “Stop!” with such rigid authority that I almost obeyed. Downtown’s grid tattooed itself on my brain. If I made it to Seventh, I could use the Marriott.

  “Rainy Cain!” one of them hollered.

  A line on the sidewalk, people waiting for Mongolian stir-fry. “’Scuse me,” I called, and cut the gap they made, listening for the cops to call the same thing. They did as I shot left and saw the Marriott flags. I lucked out at the parking garage—no oncoming—and threw my shoulder into the nearest entryway door.

  The lobby was a shock of marble. I passed two worried maître d’s. I glanced back, watched the policemen plow into the foyer. Both were chubby-ish. One was on his radio.

  But I was at the door I needed. I opened it and took the stairs toward the Skyway.

  I forced my legs to slow. The place was nuts, like Woodstock with Christmas carols. I split the tide of shoppers, peeling off my sweater as I went and tossing it in a trash can. I was down to a white tank top, which was strange but not that strange: this many people and the w
alkways became a sauna. Plenty of kids and a few of the adults had outer layers wrapped around their waists, coats stuffed in bags or left in the car. None of them had long white hair.

  I crossed the nearest footbridge. Ahead was the rotunda by the Radisson. Kitty-corner was a souvenir shop, where Vikings merchandise, including a rack of gold-and-purple stocking caps, took up most of the display window.

  The store was mobbed. I put my hair in a twist and mashed it under the cap. The tag snapped right off. Out the window, in the holiday chaos, a new cop—who was unbelievably tall—poked from the top of the masses. His head moved side to side, slow and thorough. I joined the checkout line as he passed. Once he had, I counted to five and left the store. Hands in pockets, head down. The black bubbles in the ceiling’s corners hid Cyclops eyes, transmitting to a surveillance room somewhere. MPD could commandeer it any minute and comb the footage. I went straight for the hotel.

  Checking in without a credit card takes some finesse. Luckily, I’d had practice. I accepted my card keys with extremely bogus calm.

  “I wonder what’s going on out there,” the desk lady said.

  I said, “Shoplifter, maybe,” and thanked her, went to the elevator, found my room, got in, shut the door. I slid to the floor as my legs gave out.

  You’re done, you did it, take five, you deserve a fiver.

  The room was nothing special. It had put a significant dent in Blaine’s stash, but my guilt had gone the way of the dodo. All this for $3,000? Fine, I was a punk for stealing it, but tracing my call, going all Big Brother on me? Overreact much?

  I crawled on all fours to a chair by the window, envisioning the streets of Minneapolis disco-lit with police lights. I was chuckling as I crabbed onto the seat and put my chin to the sill, because that was such a charmingly egocentric image. Like they’d—

  They had. Only, double what I’d imagined, maybe triple. I started counting the cherry tops. I quit at a dozen, my head getting light.