one door closes, another one something-something

--This is the end, my friend.

--That's The Doors, right?

--Right.

--Beautiful friend.

--Right again.

--The end? Fuck, I thought it was the beginning.

--Me, too.

--End, beginning, what's the difference?

--Now you sound like T.S. Eliot.

--What did she sing?

--He. He's a he. A love song.

--Is that what this is?

--A he or a she?

--No, a love song, or something else.

--You're something else.

--You, too.

--Hello, goodbye.

--You say yes.

--No, I say no.

--Sometimes.

--Drive.

--Where?

--Drive, they said.

 

 

in a white room with no curtains

Stoic, severe, Scandinavian. Appallingly clean and neat. Sleek. Sunlight streaming in from industrial loft windows. Yet somehow warm and inviting. Was it the brilliance or the offsetting curves: a sofa, a spacious enveloping futon, an armchair, a bureau, an S-shaped marble counter, curvilinear lighting sconces. A white zigzagging banister leading nowhere. One floor. Open plan. One long and deep closet with a sliding glass door. Jeans, sweaters, dress shirts, dresses, one gown, coats, scarves, fedoras, trousers, pants, a single bathrobe (black). Posing as a museum, featuring an installation of nine lambent votive candles and Gregorian chant intoned from Bose speakers. 

Footsteps, the soft rasp of a key in the lock, the jiggling of the door handle.

uneasy rider

I could do it. I've done it before. I could. This time, I could roll out before she comes to a rolling stop. How cinematic. For you in the peanut gallery wagging your fingers and saying, 'Why? What are you running from?' I say, 'Be infinitesimally original, for fucksake.' Or pretend to be original if you can't do better than that. Spare me. Point taken, okay? I'll nibble on the piece of cheese placed on the floor, if it makes you happy. I am running from my wounds, self- or other-inflicted, running from the self I don't have and never will, from pain, ecstasy, misery, and mystery. Got it! Mystery, that's it. I can't bear not knowing the ending. But who ever does? So juvenile. Running from her, her, and her, and every her imagined or real. Stop. This is fuckin' me up. Stirring the ashes. It's stupid. Speaking of mysteries, she's just that. Mysterious, inpenetrable, inscrutable. And that's exactly what gives me a boner. And precisely what enrages me, its denial, its blinding ignorance of me no matter how much I wave my semaphore scrawny arms. I could jump. To go where, do what? It didn't matter with 'her,' and look where it got me. Hold it. It got me right here, right now, in a new and different passenger seat, a freshly re-upholstered soliloquy. Not moody Hamlet's grandiose and silly 'to be or not to be.' Gawd, no. How gaudy and unseemly. To go or stay. To stay or go. And I don't even have dice to toss. 

running on Not-Quite-Full

I can't even. What am I doing? Or him, for that matter. Where's he going? Where's he want to go? I don't see a "we" in this future. Or now either. What is this? Where am I going? I could just slam the breaks, stop, and say, "Here's where you get out, Mr. No-name." But I doubt I will. But . . . but . . . but . . . .Admit it. You're not ready to cash in your chips. Admit it, I'm not ready to end the game, to give up the danger, to detox from this high. Maybe I'll never get another chance. A chance for what? Ecstatic sex? Such electric silence? Think about it. They could all be wrong. They could all be wrong about communication, soulmates, connection, like minds, all that shit. You never hear them say, 'You're compatible if you can sit in a car and not say anything through the whole fuckin' state of Utah.' In this case, the whole nonfuckin' state. Roll the dice. Flip a card. Exquisite wordlessness or Dante's 89th circle of same. Finishing each other's sentences like some kind of verbal orgasm or doing the same and calling it narcissism for couples. Stop with the couples, please. I told you. No such thing. Speaking of stopping, I could stop at the next corner. I mean, the other one, the one after after that. No one's there. Man, would he be shocked. Or would he?  

you turn

After 3 miles, she slammed the breaks, turned right, then right again into a residential driveway, backed up, drove to the corner, and turned left. Back toward her apartment.

--What are you doing? Where're you going?

--Back there. Going back there.

--Where? What.

--My place. There.

--What. Why.

--I'm going back.

--C'mon. Now you're just fuckin' with me. You're trying to drive me crazy.

--You gonna jump out and hitchhike, like you did before? Now it's my turn to ask questions. What was that all about? Did you murder someone? Rob a bank? No. You'd have a wad of cash. Do you? What were you running from?

--Now's a fine time to ask. After we fucked around, acted like desperados, and went on the lam.

--They're reasonable questions. I should've asked them right off the bat. Calmer. Slower. Quieter.

--We had a fight. One too many. I bailed. Easy.

--Who's 'we'?

--Her and I. She and I. Whatever.

--What kind of fight?

--To be honest, just like this.

--Well, you sure know how to pick 'em, don't you?

--I don't want to go back there. What about you? What was your gig?

--Same.

--Same?

--More or less.

--Great.

 

 

masked & anonymous

Anonymity as aphrodisiac. Not just not knowing the names, but no name for this territory, this wilderness, this nowhere they were drilling deeper into. Its fierce furtiveness. Astonishing forbiddenness. The anonymity fueling the excitement, as if in a conspiracy to fend off all accounting, all reckoning. Reckless danger. And yet the leaden security blanket of absent nomenclature, nameless outlaws, on the run. No name title category definition classification taxonomy to hold onto or to let go of.

But what of the naked call in the night, the step before the cliff, the whispered secret? To whom is it addressed? 

Return to sender?

Masked marauders.

Feral pilgrims with no destination, no map, no names.

house call

Based on the state of her car (soda cans, coupons, store receipts, a load of laundry, face masks, coins, shoes, a jacket, protein-bar wrappers, old New Yorkers, a copy of Lord of the Flies and of the Brothers Karamazov and of Lolita, half of a bra), he expected similar dishevelment and clutter at her apartment. But no. Its tidiness was blinding. A pared-down spartan rigor tended to by what angels or housekeepers was anybody's guess. It threw him off: a spatial version of jet lag. One bedroom, futon on the floor. no blinds, drapes, or shades. A open space less than a den or living room, by the kitchen: a squat coffee table with a white candle. Few-enough clothes and artifacts to enable a speedy getaway. The apartment's leanness conjured up a gong of silence.

 --Okay. Let's go.

--That's it?

--That's it.

the unkindest cut

A paring knife. Superior quality. forged, coated, sleek, ready. Anjou pears, Envy or Fuji apples, Havarti cheese. Its sharpness not depth. At the rest stop, the same one they went to the first time. Enter the stall. Sit on the closed lid. Open the purse. Take out the knife. Anticipation married to excitement: pain, fear, secret, danger, release. No, don't. Not this time. But I must. Just this once. Just this one last time. It's killing me. He's killing me. The suspense. The tension. Killing me. Killing. The first stab, a few inches, pierces her forearm, halts her breath. She knows she won't scream. Too practiced. The fresh red, its frank declaration. Someone in the next stall. Huge exhale. Right arm shaking. Breathe. Steady. Apply pressure. Careful. First the toilet paper, then the bandage. What? Where are they? Here. The bandage, then another, criss-cross. Stand up. Flush the toilet. Wash hands. Dryer. Survey the stalls. No one. The knife. In the bin. Push down the paper towels. Harder. More. More paper towels. Exit.

the talkies

A river bursting over its banks.

--Thanks for splitting the motel bill.

--'Sallright.

--Which way we going? We already went this way.

--I gotta stop off, pick up some things.

--Stop off? Where?

--Home. Such it is, such as it was.

--Stop the world, I want to get off.

--It was a play, or a movie. Maybe a song. Maybe all three.

--We're in it together.

--Innit. As Brits say.

--What is it that we're in?

--A car, stupid.

--What's that smell?

--Smells like teen spirit.

--Wrong age.

--Wrong decade.

--Try, century.

--How much longer?

--Beats me.

--What's your name?

--You go first.

--No, you.

--Never mind. I like it this way.

--Me too.

--Masked and anonymous.

 

conversion of the pagans

He turned onto his back, giving up the sleep pose.

"Come here."

But he wanted to say, "Where the fuck were you?"

She caught his rage, and the fear under that; his eyes, not his voice.

Where's the knife? In the purse, on the dresser.

"Hey."

"Hey."

Lion tamer. 

She shuffles off her sandals, walks to the bed, and lies down beside him, then twists, turns, and shimmies on top of him.

She can feel the last waves of his storm settle.

Conversion of the pagans. 

To what religion? What ancient rites?

The candles and the incense.

The slaughter and the lamb.

The familiar hymns.

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.