the presence of absence

Dream-riddled, he moved to spoon her. Without face or voice in the dream, he no less knew it was about her, about them. They were dozing on a train. Night. Winking hamlets. Europe, in one of those passenger compartments seen in old movies, the Orient Express. Somebody, a conductor or a gendarme, was swiping the door open, startling them. He bolted awake, bathed in sweat. Where was she? What . . .? Why did she...? What did I do? Her keys were gone. Check the parking lot. The car's still there. Okay. Calm down. He placed his head back on the pillow, trying to summon the dream back to life. He closed his eyes and paced his breathing. The door handle jiggled. She came in. (He assumed it was her; it had to be.) He kept his eyes closed, willing an unnatural stillness, doing his best imitation of himself sleeping. 

 

walk on the rewild side

He was sleeping. An early riser, she feared she might miss something, of what sort she didn't know. She slid on sweatpants, stepped into sandals, clicked open the door, entered the hallway, and realized she needed to grab the old-fashioned, no-tech room key. The sun wasn't up, but dawn's first blush hummed at the horizon, if you looked for it and if you wanted to imagine it. Sandals were a poor choice. Rocky terrain, darkness, poor footing, snakes, what-not. She didn't want to wander in the woods or below the cliff. Not because there were no paths or it was frosty but because she knew herself. She knew her own impulsiveness and her love affair with obsessiveness. She'd walk till she starved without thinking twice. So she found a rock, a huge boulder tilted back against the cliff wall, snug. A flat cold saddle to sit on. Is this what smokers crave, this exhalation? But smoking would despoil it. Was that a mourning dove or an owl? She didn't know the call of one from the other. Wide-spaced chirps of songbirds, not into it yet. An orchestra warming up. A rustle in the thicket to the right. None of it unexpected; none of it disturbing her reverie. Wrong. No reverie, no night-day-dawn fantasia. Something else dreamlike. She chuckled. Somebody else, some other author, would have her pondering what am I doing? what's going on? where am I going? but not her.  

aria / him

That's why I wanted to keep the lights on. Those dark-chestnut eyes, pools of molten lava. And they scared me like lava. Once we started (excuse me, once she started), I swear the temperature in the room went up 8 degrees. When I was hitchhiking, I spotted her eyes before she pulled over.  Her stare fixed me. Magnetized me. You'd think I was a fuckn zombie. None of that mattered once I started tearing off her moth-eaten teal cashmere sweater, no bra under it (if she'd only known my momentary disappointment), and yanked at her jeans like an inexperienced sophomore. All the while kissing but it wasn't kissing, not in any vernacular I had ever learned. The sheer ecstasy of a new language, ok, a new tongue. I was reckless, unsubtle, impatient. Not like me, really. So she tortured me all the more. Which pissed me off, and drove me on. No, it wasn't sportfucking, though we could hardly call it love. My payback torture was not allowing her to take off her panties. Take that. I don't smoke, but I wanted a cigarette afterward. Hilarious. For a person who doesn't sweat that much, it was like the teenage days I caddied in August: the wide expanse of my lower back a swamp.    

aria / her

I knew he wouldn't hurt me. I can tell. But I had the knife anyway, the knife he didn't know about, and still doesn't. His hands. A piano player's, not a plumber's. The long skinny fingers, the veins spidered. His soft palms. How could such delicate masterpieces brutalize? Right. Don't go there. From the second he got in the car, I knew he'd be a sensual kisser, not so much the curvature or fleshiness, more the blend of pout and promise. To be truthful, that's the reason I stopped for him. I'm good at spotting shit like that. Good eyes, better intuition. The roughness surpised me a little, not that I minded. It didn't hurt because I was ready. And I made him wait. God, I love torturing him. I made him a beggar, a hungry vulture. A pauper and a prince on a stallion. Squeezing shut my eyes in the well-lighted room, I became a tawdry cliche in a cheap novel: scouring my memory for a forgetten vocabulary, saying fuckit: stir fry lavender musk mint saliva sweat an unnamed deodorant faintly feminine unisex deaf almost deaf for a second faint-fear full fuller deep deeper more coriander Clorox bang bang over for him but not for me, no not me. 

Still. 

But I should've paid attention to those eyes.

 

tempest

The mewling and growling of cats. The howling of ravenous wolves. Barking. Shriek screeches of owls and snipes. Snake slitherings dancing tangos with oysters. And the scratches, ripped sheets, fallen drapes, and ripped rug. Grunts. Climbing up from the storm cellar surveying the carnage. Clearing. Calm.

Room 22, first night.

 

motel california

After the highway exit, on a dark winding road with no guardrails or reflectors, they found a bungalow motel surrounded by pines and rocky cliffs. Better to say the motel found them. It sprouted up from nowhere.

He pulled in, road dust rising and twigs popping.

Vera behind the counter: "How many nights?"

They looked at each other, paused a second, and shrugged their shoulders.

"Twin or queen?"

He says "twin"; she says "queen."

"Vlad, dear, is 22 ready?"

"Yes, Vera, verily."

"Room 22. And I need a credit card."

They each produce a card and slap it on the counter like blackjack players with a winning hand.

"Split it 50-50."

"No smoking."

summit talks

-- Where we going?

-- I don't know, like I honestly don't know.

-- You don't know?

-- Why should I?

-- Where do you want to go?

-- Good question. That's another good question.

-- Why?

-- Why what?

-- Why are you on the road?

-- You too.

-- You get the twenty?

-- Yup.

-- I can drive.

-- I know. 

This they said in near-unison, he following her by half a beat. 

They were reaching the peak of a modest mountain, considered a steep hill in some quarters. A valley with hamlets dotted the horizon before them, tired lights from the night before twinkling, morning mists falling and lifting lazily. Beyond that, more hills and valleys -- unless it was a sleep-deprivation illusion. Which was possible after nearly 21 straight hours of driving, interrupted only by pee stops beside the car, shielded by a door. 

They burst out, near-unison, in stupid laughter.

-- Drive, she said.

sic transit

They rode in silence. After all, she had extended a literal open-door invitation. Neither one of them asked about destination or purpose; neither offered a clue. A chess game without pieces or chessboard. This went on for a good twenty, thirty miles, into the gloaming. No phone checks, no humming, no shifting in their seats. A rest stop loomed in eight miles. He could see she was running on empty. She slowed and drifted into the expansive, well-lighted rest area anchored by a large building with fast-food joints, stores with souvenirs and local produce and crafts, and toilets. As she paused before parking, he fished a twenty out of his left pocket, placed it on the dash, opened the door, and darted inside in search of a bathroom. She took the money, put it in her jeans back pocket, and angled into a parking space. She got out and locked the car with her fob, waited for the confirming honk, and then repeated it. 

Will he come back? Do I care? Should I ditch him? He doesn't scare me. But I've been wrong before.

He skipped the handwashing, seized by a fear.

Shit. I better get out there. She's going to drive off. I just know it.

When he emerged outside, he scanned the parking lot and didn't see the Rabbit. His breathing raced, until he spotted the car, empty, in the back corner, not far from where truckers assembled as they called it a night. He started strolling toward the car, then stopped himself. I'm hungry, plus who knows where the next spot is and whether she'll stop there. Sounds like a five-piece chicken tenders and a large coffee. Maybe she'll let me drive. She doesn't know about the DWIs. What if she comes out and doesn't see me, and says fuck it? Hurry up.

She stepped outside and couldn't find the car. It was right there. I know it was. He stole it, I bet he stole it, cocksucker.

hitchhiker

His right thumb poked up in the air, neither waving at nor halting the onslaught of cars, trucks, motorcycles. In the vespers desert landscape, he looked like a caricature of a saguaro cactus. Walking backward, he was careful not to trip over an unnoticed branch, cobble, or Coke can. And if he were to trip, he'd fall away from traffic, onto the shoulder. At least that's how he was training himself. The vehicles that zoomed by left a concussive wake of dust and sound. Hitchhike. So Sixties. Did anyone do it anymore? Did fate dole out the same risks and perils? Was it illegal in Arizona?

He was afraid of nightfall. He decided he'd turn around and walk along with the traffic parallel to him on the left, if he had to. But he knew all he would need was one distracted driver to pull the curtains down. Who knows, could a nondistracted driver barrel into a stranger on purpose? The raucous and-riled up times said, Yes.

But he didn't have to worry about such a scenario, not this night. A silver Volkswagen Rabbit with its right signal blinking slowed down in the right lane and churned up the gravel. He instinctively moved farther into the shoulder and looked to size up the driver.

The car rolled to a stop, its engine idling. She leaned across to the passenger side of the two-door and shoved it open.

"Get in."

 

 

the short hello, the long goodbye

"Proper greeting." That was her way of saying, "kiss me." It was a command as much as a request. It was a thing. Their code. He'd comply. And then he'd immediately wipe his lips with his sleeve. That was a thing, too. Saliva. Germs. But that was their greeting ritual, such as it was. It was no mating dance. Gawd no. Quite the opposite. Typically it played out when he got into the car. She always drove. He had lost his license after the third DWI. 

"Proper greeting."

He ignored it, and sullen and silent in the passenger seat.

"Didn't you hear me?"

Nothing.

She shifted into drive.

Instead of turning left, she took a right, and then another right. The car sailed onto the interstate ramp, heading west into the sunset.

"Where ya goin'?"

"Fuck you, you fuckin' fuck."

"What?! What are you talkin' about? What got into you? What are you doing? Where are we going?"

"You fuckin' heard me."

Silence.

At the toll booth, she took the 20 mph E-ZPass lane.

After a stony, infinite 30 miles, he said, "Pull over. Let me out. Just let me the fuck out. I'm done. Stop!"

She crawled to a stop on the shoulder.

The lavender rouge sunset was postcard perfect.

He opened the door, not looking at her. He got out.

She put her left blinker on and pulled back onto the Thruway.

After another 30 miles, she turned the radio on. As she scanned and scoured for music, nothing came on out in the country, just crackles of news and preacher stations.

She pushed the button to turn the radio off.

She turned the headlights on.

A song came into her head, something from the eighties. She couldn't remember the words, barely the tune. Something about a chameleon. 

She hummed it, the best she could remember, gave a finger to the windshield, and burst into laughter. 

 

free air

Border crossings were the hardest part. More accurately, immediately after crossing the border the adjustment was difficult, even perilous. We often said we would welcome a buffer zone, some sort of transition space. It's awfully challenging to travel from one climate, atmosphere, and culture into another one totally opposite. As born and raised Confrairians, we naturally took air for granted. We never thought of it as a commodity. Air wasn't something bought or sold. It was there for the taking, no questions asked. We were born into this and never imagined any other regime existed, or could exist. The first crack in the wall of this thinking came with the arrival of the first Contrairian refugess. Who are they? we thought. We knew something was amiss. Their pale pallor, skinniness, hoarse voices, and thirst. It goes without saying: their difficulty breathing. After all, COPD was practically in their DNA. So, free air was our birthright. A given. But not so for the Contrairians. They had to refill their cylinders daily. From what we have heard, the irony was that they had to purchase their air at old gas stations, from machines that said FREE AIR. How's that for bitter irony? And cruelty. They told us that the FREE AIR pumps only took quarters. At last count, 24 quarters for each day-cylinder per person. Adds up, doesn't it? We're just learning about this, but apparently the Contrairians have lung portals for refills. It seems logical to assume that the cylinders contain pure oxygen. We do not know what their atmosphere consists of. The two countries are undoubtedly sealed off by some sort of shield or vacuum. We don't know. We should know. It's a state secret. (We can't help but wonder if there's clandestine collusion and black marketerring on each side of the border, though we can't imagine what THEY would have of value for Confrairians.) The future is bleak. Air wars are a virtual certainty. And we have nowhere to flee to, not that we know of, not yet. Maybe someone reading this can send a message in a bottle, or in an empty cylinder. Something. Anything.