“Holy crap,” says Trev, looking wide-eyed out the window. “Check it out.”
Leaning against the burned-out COZY 8 sign in the motor court, with a dirty gray backpack at her feet, is the girl with the fingerless gloves. She’s smoking as usual. Today she’s wearing a denim miniskirt (too short) and a skimpy sleeveless T-shirt (not warm enough), which says something on it that I can’t see, though I assume it’s offensive.
“Damn, she’s hot,” says Trev. “Don’t you think?”
“Way too young for me. But she’s cute, yeah. Even though she’s doing her best not to be.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know, she’s just a kid dressed up like a . . . strumpet.”
“Strumpet? Dude, how old are you? What the heck is a strumpet?”
“A prostitute.”
“I don’t think she looks like a prostitute. I think she looks rad.”
Old Willard is back, proffering a yellow smile which looks half apologetic and half triumphant. “We outta waffles,” he says. “How ’bout biscuits and gravy?”
“Perfect,” says Trev.
We both turn our attention back to the window. The sky is growing darker by the minute. A stiff wind out of the west pelts the window with desert grit. A sudden gust sends a brown paper bag billowing across the court. Smoking Girl sits down on the pavement and pulls her knees in close. She ought have a coat on and some jeans. When she catches Trev and me staring at her, she gives us the finger.
“I wonder what the deal is with her,” Trev wonders aloud.
“Looks like one of them little Nazi tarts,” says Willard, arriving with two steaming platters. “Don’t be shy now,” he says.
“What are those lumps?” Trev inquires.
“Them’s mushrooms.”
“I’m gonna let mine cool,” I say, an answer that apparently displeases Old Willard, whose yellow smile withers.
“Suit yourself,” he says, and walks away.
I sneak a glance at Smoking Girl, who has turned her back on us. It flusters and embarrasses me that she should think I’m a dirty old man. Maybe her old man’s a pervert. Maybe he can’t keep his hands off her. Maybe that’s why she’s out in the middle of nowhere with a dirty backpack. Maybe that’s why she dresses the way she does, because she feels cheap.
Sand pelts the window furiously, and in an instant the sky ominously darkens. Smoking Girl looks up and tosses her cigarette aside. She crosses her arms and regains her feet, turning around just in time to see a rippling curtain of black wash out the horizon. It advances with terrifying speed out of the west, like a tidal wave, swallowing everything in its path. Within twenty seconds it’s on the very edge of the motor court. Smoking Girl snatches her backpack off the ground, and I lose sight of her.
“What the hell?” says Trev.
“What is it?” I say. “Is it rain?”
“I think it’s sand.”
Whatever it is, it’s fully upon us now, blotting out the sky, howling like the mother of all banshees as it washes over us. Old Willard pokes his head out of the kitchen and whistles like he might whistle at a thirty-pound bass. Even Jessie the Marmot looks incredulous as the overhead lights begin to flicker and the entire restaurant shudders, setting knickknacks and silverware to rattling. I can’t see two feet out the window. The motor court is awash in a churning miasma of dust. Smoking Girl is at large somewhere in the thick of it—I’ve got to find her. Instinctively, I jump to my feet and stride down the aisle, arriving at the entrance just as she bursts through the glass door with a gasp. She drops her bag on the floor, coughs twice, and leans forward with her hand on her knees to catch her breath. When she straightens up, she’s looking me right in the chest. I can see now that her shirt says THE CRAMPS, in warbly lettering. BAD MUSIC FOR BAD PEOPLE.
“What are you looking at?” she says.
“I was just going out to make sure you were okay.”
“How sweet,” she says, with mock sincerity. “I need a cup of coffee.”
All at once light floods back into the restaurant, and just as suddenly as it began the storm is over. For us, anyway.
Smoking Girl walks right past me, muttering about the sand in her shoes, and sits down in the booth on the far side of Trev.
“Hey,” she says flatly.
“What’s up?” he says.
“Right, you’re the guy with the shoes,” she says.
Smoking Girl runs her hand through her cropped bleached hair, then sifts some sand out of her black bangs. “What’s that?” she says, grimacing at his biscuits and gravy, which has ceased its steaming and oozing and developed a skin.
“The house specialty,” he says.
“It looks disgusting.”
I resume my seat. “You hungry?” I say.
She ignores me. “So, what’s your name, anyway?” she says to Trev.
“Trevor. What about you?”
“Dot.”
“Dot?”
“Do I look like a Dorothy to you?”
“I guess not,” he says.
“And this ain’t Kansas, either,” I say, to which she rolls her eyes and glances vaguely out the window.
“Yeah? Well, it may as well be.”
Old Willard returns to check on our progress. “There a problem here?”
“No, everything’s great,” I say.
“You ain’t touched it.”
“We got sidetracked.”
“Hey, Gramps,” says Dot. “Who do I gotta blow to get a cup of coffee around here?”
I don’t know who’s more shocked, me or Old Willard, whose brow furrows as blood suffuses his face.
“Cream and sugar,” she says. “And can I see a menu? This old perv wants to buy me breakfast.”
Old Willard is visibly at a loss. He’s seen a few things in his day: kamikaze fighters, mutant rockchucks, some awfully big bass—but never this. He retreats in search of a menu, shaking his hoary old head and grumbling.
“So, where are you guys headed?”
“Salt Lake City,” says Trev.
“Why? You Mormons?”
“Nah. My dad lives there.”
“Poor him.”
She turns her attention to her backpack, rifling through the front pocket and producing a compact, which she holds in front of her face as she wipes her mascara off with the tail of her Cramps shirt.
“What about you?” I say. “Where are you going?”
“Denver.”
“What’s in Denver?”
“Not much,” she says, snapping her compact shut. “My stepdad.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“Tacoma,” she says.
Old Willard won’t even look at her as he flips her cup over and fills it with coffee. He drops the menu on the table and turns, then thinks twice, and turns back.
“You ain’t one of them little Nazi tarts are you?”
“Do I look like a Nazi to you?”
“Okay, then,” he mutters, walking off.
“I’ll have waffles,” she calls after him.
“We’re out,” he says gruffly, without turning around.
“Out of batter?”
Now he swings around, holding the coffeepot. “That’s right. Out of batter.”
“So, there’s no more made? Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“But you’ve got more in a box somewhere, right? Probably the same box you use to make those biscuits, I’ll bet. Bisquick or whatever, right?”
“Could be.”
“Could be, huh?”
They lock eyes. In the brittle silence, neither one of them flinches, though Old Willard’s chin begins to quiver slightly under the strain. Dot’s pale little face is screwed up in a portrait of defiance. Old Willard glowers back at her like she’s Heinrich Himmler as Trev and I exchange expectant glances.
Then, very slowly, very decisively, Dot looks from empty table to empty table, then looks back at Old Willard and hoists an e
yebrow at him. “Looks like you could use the business,” she says.
I can see the air go right out of the old guy. He turns, he slumps, he mutters. And ten minutes later, he returns with waffles.
“See, Gramps?” she says. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
terrible things to say
I planned that summer vacation in ’05 a year in advance. I was dead set on taking the family road trip that my family never took. The one where everyone piles into the station wagon. Route 66. The Grand Canyon. The stuff of American myth. Never mind the 150 miles of scorched earth between Barstow and Needles. Never mind the hundred-degree heat. Never mind that Janet was seven months pregnant with Jodi.
Unlike the vacation, Jodi was not planned.
“Do you think I wanted to get pregnant, Ben—now? Right when things are coming together for me? For us?”
We’re in a dirt parking lot outside Kingman, Arizona, in the paltry shade of a lone pine off the interstate. We’ve just gassed up. Janet and I are stretching our legs. Piper sleeps in the backseat, her hair pasted in strands to her forehead, the skin of her arm stuck to the vinyl. It’s been a long stretch between Needles and Kingman. Not the stuff of American Myth. Janet is blotchy. She has sweat rings at the armpits.
“What about me?” I say, kicking up a cloud of dust. “Do you think I wanted you to get pregnant? I finally get a chance to have a life again, and now I’ll be back to square one—stuck at home, drowning in shit-smeared onesies, tiptoeing around the house at all hours. I swear if I’m forced to watch Clifford the Big Red Dog once more, I’ll hang myself. Do you have any idea what this means for me? You get to see people every day, Janet—adults. You get to eat lunch wherever you want. I eat french toast, shrimp cocktail, and Orange Julius. Do you think this is what I had planned for myself—this is what I wanted to do when I grew up?”
She mops her sweaty forehead with the sleeve of her blouse. “What did you want, Ben?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Did you want to be a parade float painter? A poet? That’s lucrative! Or did you want to keep selling scones your whole life? It’s never too late to get your real-estate license, you know.”
“We can’t all play animal proctologist to the rich, Janet.”
“Well, good thing some of us can, because the last time I checked you couldn’t raise a family on free verse and scones—you can’t even pay for child care with that.”
“Got one of us through grad school, though, didn’t it? I don’t remember your student loans paying for that apartment on Roosevelt. Or all those free cups of coffee.”
“Well, I’d say that I’ve more than evened the score on that count, though I’d like to point out that we’ve moved up in the world somewhat from that studio with the leaky ceiling and the rusty bathtub ring.”
I’m out of comebacks. Moreover, I’m out of fight. She’s right, anyway—what have I ever done with my life? Without Janet, I’d probably still be living in that leaky studio, stacking scones, writing self-conscious poetry.
Janet sees me pouting. Suddenly she laughs, and it’s not bitter or pointed. “Remember the guy upstairs?” she says.
“What, the drummer?”
“No. Him, too. But the crazy guy. The guy who always accused you of ‘zapping’ him with your ‘faggot secret.’ ”
“Felix.”
“Yes! He was convinced everybody was gay.”
“Everybody but him. Poor Felix. Remember the Vietnamese place downstairs? I think it was Vietnamese.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you remember the name of it?”
“It was something funny. You used to always joke about it.”
“It was called Don Pae.”
She smiles. “Right. You used to say it was an invitation to dine and ditch.” She looks off at the dusty horizon, until her smile fades, then she turns back to me. “I’m sorry, Ben.”
Suddenly I feel like a heel. I’ve driven her to the edge of despair with this trip. How could I not know better? She’s been a trouper through it all—fun, adventurous, patient. Despite an aching back and swollen ankles. Here she is, seven months pregnant. It’s ninety-eight degrees, in a dirt parking lot in Arizona. We’ve just driven two hundred miles. Of course she’s distraught.
“No, I’m sorry,” I say. “I should’ve called off this trip.”
“I’m glad we didn’t,” she says. And she steps toward me and hugs me, and I can feel her sweat-glistening forehead against my cheek.
the story with dot
Yeah, he’s okay,” Dot says. “Kind of a dork but stable, you know? Even after my mom died—especially then, I guess.”
Dot blows into her coffee, and a little steam curls up around her pierced nose and past her pierced eyebrow. “He pretends like it didn’t really affect him. But it’s all an act. He’s just trying to make me feel safe or whatever. He talks to me different now—like I’m all fragile, or superdepressed, or I’m gonna swallow a bottle of pills the first time he turns his head.” She sets her coffee down, but immediately her hands seek occupation. She picks up her fork and draws syrup squiggles on her plate.
“Yeah, I know it’s a big deal. She was my mom. Hello, I get it. And it seems unfair. But it happened, you know? Now I wish everybody would just leave me alone about it. Especially Ron. It’s not like the whole freaking world telling me how sorry they are is helping. It’s not like all of a sudden I’m some little lost lamb or whatever. Like I can’t take care of myself or like make my own decisions. It doesn’t mean Ron’s gotta like try to be my mom and my dad.”
Looking at her with her waiflike attire, her dirty backpack, and her pale delicate finger tracing circles around her empty coffee cup, her innocent little face molded into something worldly, it’s hard to blame Ron or anyone else for trying to protect her.
“It’s like the whole thing with Kirk,” she says. “Kirk was like the only person who understood me. He was the only person who didn’t keep saying he was sorry or like try to get me to talk about it or cry on his shoulder. He treated me like a person, not some helpless baby. When my mom was alive, Ron wouldn’t have said anything about Kirk. He might have thought stuff, but he wouldn’t have done anything about it—like refuse to let me hang out with him or whatever, just because he’s older and he’s got a little ink and he likes to hang out downtown. It’s like all of a sudden Ron was trying to protect me from Kirk, and Kirk was like the only good thing about Denver. Everyone just thinks because Kirk looked the way he did, he was like some sort of bad influence. Kirk had his shit together more than anyone wanted to give him credit for. It’s not his fault the whole freaking world was like . . . against him.”
“Where is he?”
“Jail—but he didn’t actually do anything. His stupid roommates were dealing. He didn’t even know about it.”
Poor Dot. So young, so loyal, so misguided. And what about Kirk? Does Kirk, in the fog of his adolescent self-absorption, realize the value of a lover willing to forgive him anything? I doubt it. And Dot can see me doubting.
“See what I mean? You’re just like Ron and the rest of them. You just jump to conclusions, make up your mind about stuff before you even know about it. But whatever, I guess I can’t blame you, you’re just male.”
She lays her fork aside and picks up her coffee cup again, then sets it down and begins fiddling with the saltshaker.
“Anyway, after Kirk’s whole deal, it didn’t make sense to hang around Denver for another summer. So I left.”
“To live with your real dad?”
“Hmph,” she says. “Real dad. Yeah, I guess you’d call him that. Except that he thinks he’s like fifteen years old or whatever—even though he’s like forty. I always thought he was cool when I was younger, even though he didn’t hang around and my mom always called him a deadbeat. He’d send me cool presents from Thailand and Australia and places. Like one time he sent me one of those didgeridoos. And once he sent me a really rad turquoise bracelet, which I
still have.” She reaches down and fishes around in the front pocket of her ragged backpack, until she finds the bracelet. She spins it around in her hand, so we can see it from all angles. It’s a chunky silver thing, inlaid willy-nilly with dozens of tiny turquoise chips.
“That’s totally rad,” says Trev.
“Yeah, I know, huh?”
Instead of returning the bracelet to her pack, she slides it over her thin wrist just above her fingerless glove and spins it around absently a few times as she looks out the window.
“I always thought my mom was jealous of my dad,” she says. “For leaving, I mean. Because she was like stuck in Denver. And even though he left, I always kinda thought it was her choice not to be with him, and she was dumb not to. Now that I’m older it’s like, I don’t know, he just seems immature. It’s kinda hard to believe he’s my dad. Or anyone’s dad.”
“Are you mad that he left?” says Trev.
She spins her bracelet some more, inspects it vaguely. “Nah. Denver sucks. I just think he needs to grow up. For a while, he was acting like an adult, sort of. He was wearing Dockers, working for some company that distributed investment videos or something like that. But then he quit, and then his car got repossessed and he never really got another job. Now he drives around in a total bomb, and he built like a skateboard ramp in the driveway. Can you believe that? A skateboard ramp? At his age? He wears baggy shorts and Mossimo shirts and says ‘bro’ all the time. He wants to act like we’re friends or whatever instead of being my dad.”
Dot shakes her head, and waves it off, as though she’s weary of the whole subject. She looks out the window again, where a thin layer of dust covers the pavement. “I don’t know,” she says. “It’s weird. My dad’s weird. Tacoma sucked, anyway.”
Shortly before noon, the rain, like the dust before it, blows in suddenly and furiously from the west. No warning from the Weather Channel. I think it’s the weather that has inspired Dot to forsake her thumb and cast her lot with us, at least as far as Butte. The three of us loaf in the darkened motel room through the remainder of the morning, with the TV on mute. By two, the wind has died down somewhat, but the rain continues in fat droplets, battering the ceiling and running down the window in sheets. Come late afternoon, I order Domino’s, wondering why I didn’t think of it before.