Our trip's only forty miles old, but D turns the big grey wheel of the pickup and we lurch down an exit ramp going a hell of a lot faster than the signs suggest. L had already fallen asleep in the small backseat and gets thrown upward from the inertia. She wakes and bellows something about crashing and braces against my headrest. I cling to the door handle to keep from falling in D's lap, my insides shift, and the world brightens through the windshield. The road, the cars, the grass, are all at once bleached, licked to their white bones—and maybe it’s the valium—but I taste pennies, and the engine and the shouts and the wind just bubble and moan like we dove down a toilet. I'm yanked to my left, almost clean out of my high—and then I'm not—we're out of the turn and just going fast again.
Sorry, D says, have to pee.
L says she refuses to die in Michigan, grabs her purse off the floor, rummages the contents to make sure nothing spilled out.
I see a baseball cap on the center console near the emergency brake and realize it’s mine. Takes a bit of effort but I manage it onto my head and melt back into the leather seat. I finger the air conditioning vent to blow at my new position.
It’s a good ways into a perfectly wasted Saturday. The summer’s just starting to give up. And this afternoon I wake up to L in a black satin dress tapping open toed pumps, putting lipstick on over the kitchen sink—her thick hair in chocolate waves, falling over one side of her face. She doesn’t even look at me, just says we’re going to gamble tonight—and so here we are, skipping dinner and more leftover muscle relaxants to drive to a Detroit casino and piss away our rent.
D checks the gas gauge, then the mirror, fidgets with the radio till it comes back around to the original station, then turns to L in the backseat but doesn’t say anything. His eyes are off the road the whole time.
In any other circumstance I’d be getting nervous.
In the side mirror I see L wipe drool from her cheek. She leans back and stares out her tiny side window.
At the exit we took there’s nothing but trees, mostly in the distance, but also big gangs of them that rush up close to the road with black branches that spark through rigid little leaves. I’m trying to follow one branch every group we pass, rolling my cheek against the leather, straining to keep focus, but all I get is a few crisp moments, photographs that smear as soon as my eyes touch them.
The leaves are falling. It’s funny, I don’t remember from childhood, not specifically anyway, when the leaves are supposed to fall. But early September feels—early. I’d think there’s still time to grow.
Soon the trees are gone. Replaced by gas stations and semis and IHOPs. The air conditioning smells of diesel and asphalt and microwaved chicken. The sight and noise of it shift too quickly, like I’ve been shuffled into an unpleasant dream. Heavy engines idle. Horns growl like dinosaurs. Far off truckers in big overalls and mesh caps slam doors, waddle to their cabs with coffee cups, paper sacks. Their bodies wander the parking lots like clay—too stiff, too fat, too old. They are skeletons, fossils trudging through tar. Not people.
D makes a joke, something about L finding a new man here. She doesn’t respond.
***
No comments:
Post a Comment