Part 4 (1/2)

'I'm afraid of what's gonna happen to you.'

Silence on the phone line. Hard shouts and machine-gun fire in the heat and wreck upstairs. Stillness in this tacky lobby. Dead man still dead. His cheek against the desktop, his arms spread wide. Little black fly on his brown hand. Today's the dead man's daughter's fifth birthday. She was born the night this city fell. She wants a Cinderella DVD. G.o.d, would she die for that long yellow hair.

'Did you hear what I said?'

'Yeah, you're afraid. What else is new?'

'I'm afraid of what's coming.'

'What, you got a friggin' crystal ball?'

'No, but I see things.'

'What's that mean?'

'I know what they did to that girl.'

'What girl?'

'You know just what I mean. You weren't supposed to be there. You watched them nail her up. You watched them do what they did.'

'Stop. Please.'

'And how she glistened with gas. It's been eating you up. It's made you close right up to everyone. Especially yourself. That means you and me.'

'Now I know you're certifiably bat-s.h.i.+t.'

'I just don't wanna see you rock the rest of our life away a sad pill junky in that chair.'

'What chair?'

'The one at Mom's yard sale.'

'How the h.e.l.l could that happen? I'm a Marine. I'm a motherf.u.c.kin' Marine.'

Now the voice on the phone is quiet. And the shooting upstairs sounds like firecrackers in a oil barrel at midsummer, Anytown, USA. And the dead man's eyes are open. And gla.s.sy. And a chill shoots through the soldier in this hot lobby, his long black gun on the desk, the silent receiver against his dusty ear.

'h.e.l.lo,' he says. 'Where'd you go?'

No one at the other end. Silence.

'Is this a joke? Please say something.'

n.o.body. Little black fly on Lionel's arm now. Little black fly on his face. And upstairs they keep shooting. Upstairs and all around the world.

The rain's stopped falling and everything feels a little cleaner as she motors along and the pa.s.sing countryside spools out before her like a roll of Wal-Mart film she hid away in a drawer somewhere. In five days' time she's covered three and a half states, seen a lady with elephantiasis in a van at a gas station, experienced a surprise o.r.g.a.s.m brought on by the incessant hum of the moped seat between her legs, nothing to write home about. She found a suede purse in a truck-stop bathroom, pocketed the cash and went to mail the purse to the address on the woman's driver's license, but as she copied the street name and zip code on the package her eyes strayed to the face in the picture ID and the face seemed so dreadfully used up that she cursed herself for being such a klepto and put the money back and mailed the thing off and cried inside her pink helmet for miles down the road.

Maybe I won't dance again. Hard to think of a time when I didn't have this pain. Weird how fast we forget the way things used to be. Guess it's good though. Guess it's built into us somehow, this way of forgetting, helps us deal with the holes left in us when things we love get taken away. I was so close to it. So close to dancing for real. The ballet. Listen to the sound of that. What could be better? The ballet. Like a bird at your window. No, like a room of colored gla.s.s where you go when you're high on songs. Just when I could close my eyes and do it. Just when I could see the quiet crowd waiting. Just when I could smell my own sweat on the stage, that's when he took it away from me. The ballet. It was okay when I stripped. He was fine with that. First I thought it was the money I brought home from the club. That if I quit The Cat House to really do my dream he'd have to pay all the bills. But it wasn't the money. He made plenty. Ross Klein. The big critic. Big deal. My last boyfriend was a biker, he was tough and greasy and out of work but boy was he a teddy bear, wouldn't hurt a fly, and looking back I think he might have really loved me.

Then this one. Ross Klein with his silver laptop. Ross Klein with his father's boat. His place in Venice. His hairdo. His blog. All he ever wanted to do was write songs. That was his dream. That's what he told me once when we were drunk. That maybe he could write one good enough to fix his f.u.c.ked-up heart, one good enough to bring his mom back. Sad, but it took him thirty years to realize he wasn't any good at it. So where do you turn after that? Guess if he couldn't write the songs to make the young girls cry he figured he'd just pick apart other people's in a newspaper.

So when I told him I finally got the audition it was too much for him I think. The bat he hit me with still had the price tag on it. My girl Brown Shugah at The Cat House told me something once, 'It's the perfect white boys you gotta watch out for. You can tell by the way they look into their own eyes in the mirror. They got their cake from day one and when they can't eat it too they snap. And when they snap it's like Nightmare On Elm Street.' Guess I shoulda listened to her.

At a gravel pull-off a little ways past a thin metal sign that said 'Effingham, Illinois' she shuts her engine down and kicks the kickstand out and takes her helmet off and hangs it on the handlebars. Struggling past a group of picture-takers, she makes her way through the chain-link fence and limps past the edge of the gravel into a field of green corn that reaches out in all directions to touch a vague horizon. Gloria didn't bother to read the big silver plaque by where she parked. The one that boasted 'America's Biggest Crucifix', but she can see the thing for herself right there in the field. What a monster. All white and s.h.i.+ning in the sun. Rising up from the quiet earth like an eerie daydream. Something sudden. Something altogether warped.

Now the pilgrims at the roadside in pastel-colored clothes who've driven a hundred miles to this holy place lay their cameras by and watch her.

'What's she doin' out there?'

'I'd say she's trespa.s.sin'.'

'Yeah, but what's she after?'

'h.e.l.l if I know.'

'Must be a druggy come lookin' for forgiveness.'

'She better ask in her sweetest voice.'

'Look it, she can't hardly walk.'

'Hey!' they call to her. 'You all right?' But she doesn't turn, doesn't hear them.

'She's headin' straight for it.'

'She must be want'n to touch it.'

'Isn't that against the law?'

In that field of corn, dragging herself the way she is, dressed in her wandering clothes, her hair all astray, she could be some kind of lady scarecrow come to life by strange arts, shocked awake in this tourist trap by the simple emptiness of life, doomed to hunt for love, doomed to scratch an answer in the soil.

'Now what's she doin'?'

'She's turnin' around.'

'She's lookin' right at us.'

'Looks like she's gettin' down to pray.'

'The h.e.l.l she is.'

'This one needs saving somethin' powerful.'

'I'll be d.a.m.ned. The tramp's p.i.s.sin'! We gotta get a shot of this.'

'Lucy, cover your eyes!'

'Lester, zoom in!'

'I'm tryin' to, which b.u.t.ton is it?'