1
I AM TRYING
He hoped she’d be there.
After work he got stuck in traffic only once, then the WX interchange spun him
around while he fussed with the adapter in the tape deck and flung him out away from the
gaptoothed jaw of downtown, where the highest of the high buildings only stood at a
dozen stories, and towards the southward reaches of Sacramento suburbs and then into
the flatlands surrounding interstate 5. He drove at a hundred and played leapfrog with a
heavy-bearded Harley rider who flashed him a thumbs up and a laugh before he exited
somewhere in Galt. The car and the day ran hot, the broken air conditioner in the beat-up
old Beamer and cracked windows only cooled the interior of the car so much. Then he
stopped for water.
He parked at a faded cartstand on the side of the road watched by a weathered and
dustblown Mexican man. Some tattered crows eyed him. The man looked out from under
his old trucker hat bleached by sun and greeted him good day in Spanish. Shaw asked
him for a bottle of agua.
“Adonde vas?” the Mexican man asked.
“Tracy,” Shaw replied. That was where they had agreed to meet – about halfway
between them. He stopped to think of the correct words from high school Spanish. That
was a solid three or four years ago. He looked at the man, face heavily creased by sun and
eyes half lidded in the bright of the day. “Para ver mi novia.”
Bueno, the Mexican man said. He asked if he loved his novia.
2
Shaw told him that he did and asked him for one of the oranges advertised on the
cardboard sign for cheap. The Mexican man looked up at the greyed-out skies and said it
looked like rain. Shaw looked up, hands planted at his waist.
“Quien conoces que va a pasar,” he said. The Mexican man smiled and the
creases in his face deepened. He said he didn’t know, but Shaw believed he understood
him. He paid him for the orange and water with his last three dollars. When the Mexican
reached into the pocket of his dirty fishing vest for change, Shaw told him to keep it.
He sped for another half an hour before the lonely sprout of Tracy grew before
him, outskirted by the beginnings of farms and the smell of livestock. The orange peel
pieces on his lap and center console overpowered by the smell coming from outside. It
made him think of the last time he met Evey, then in Fairfield – never in the same place
twice, they said – near some farms, and the smell of cow had lingered on the both of them
long afterwards. That date they bickered over where to eat dinner and fucked in the shade
and acrid smell of fertilizer at the edge of a cow pasture and then went their separate
ways.
Shaw circled directionless, looping around downtown Tracy in wider and wider
concentric shapes on roads populated and busy with the residential cars and people
making their way home from work. Streetlights halted him and the rain started, mugging
up the atmosphere and melting off the road in small and independent vapor clouds. He
drove out from under it and when another streetlight stopped him it caught up again.
Minutes flashed on and then off as the next one came on the digital clock, glowing green
in the darkened afternoon light. They were supposed to meet at a random park Evey had
3
Google mapped – Rainbow Park, he thought – at four. At half past, Shaw banged on the
steering wheel with his fists and swore. He hoped she wouldn’t leave, and at the same
time wondered if he didn’t want her to leave, and he could just go home. At 4:49 he
found Rainbow Park and the rain cloud hovered over it. He got out of his car and walked.
Rainbow Park stretched for a half mile or so, not a very long park, equipped with
communal pool and jungle gym for young children. Evey was nowhere in the park. The
rain thickened, and the swimming students at the pool clambered out and parents hurried
their kids past Shaw and into their cars. He stood under an overhang with the back of his
shirt pulled up over the top of his head and watched every other car as they filed out of
the parking lot.
At five o’clock the sun returned and evaporated the blanket of rainwater the cloud
dropped behind. Shaw slid down to the concrete and sat against the wall. He plucked at a
piece of decayed and moldering sheetrock that crumbled off the edge, then ground it in
his fingers to help stop his hands from sweating. He looked around and decided he would
wait until six and then go home. At eighteen after, Evey’s car pulled in to the parking lot.
She kicked open her car door and slid out of her seat, dragging her green purse with the
clown painted on it and waved to Shaw. Then she set her car alarm and walked to the
awning.
“I’m so sorry I’m late, Shaw.” She looked into her bag, digging through it for
some unseen important object. The kind of objects people look for when trying to avoid
looking at people. “How long have you been here?” Shaw opened told her he had been
waiting for an hour but that it was all right.
4
Evey apologized again, and Shaw watched her while she rifled through her bag,
still not looking up. She stopped, stood back and breathed aloud, a strangely-pitched
sound like a toddler miming an elephant, then ran her hands through her brown and
auburn hair, combed down to her shoulders where it stopped. She put her hands on her
hips at the top of her white ruffle skirt and looked at Shaw, then smiled and asked how he
was doing.
Shaw said okay. “It’s been a while.”
“I’m sorry I didn’t call to let you know I was going to be late. There was a lot of
traffic. A wreck or something.” Then she hugged Shaw, and stood on the tips of her black
hi-top Chucks so she could stand slightly more even. Once she had told him she never
liked being so small. The top of her head still only reached his chin whenever they
hugged, and he smelled her brown and auburn hair and scalp underneath. Or whatever
she washed into it, some kind of conditioner. The smell made him choke a little bit, and
he held it in so she wouldn’t notice.
Shaw told her it was better that she didn’t call. Evey thought about it and then
nodded.
“C’mon, let’s go over there.” She groped at Shaw’s hand and pulled him towards
the middle of the park, shadowed by clusters of pine. Somewhere about the center she
dropped herself to the ground and pulled Shaw down with her. He lay flat on his back,
and she cocooned up against his side and they listened to the sounds of splashed water as
some of the kids migrated back to the pool, rain now gone. Shaw looked down at Evey
and she looked back and smiled. A chunk of food nested between her near-perfect teeth.
5
Shaw looked away, over at the pool. Some kid belly flopped off the diving board, which
created a loud splash and some excitement from the other kids. Evey asked if anything
was wrong.
“Nothing’s wrong,” Shaw said. He checked the time on his phone. “Happy to be
here. And I’m glad you were able to make it.” Evey smiled through that piece of food
again – it looked like bread. Maybe mashed up peanuts. Or something.
“Even if you were late,” he added.
The two of them laid without talking until Evey suggested a visit to Safeway.
Shaw said okay and didn’t ask what for. He circled by it earlier in his search for the park,
so he knew exactly which area of downtown it was in. They took Evey’s car, and she
sang along with the music. A Wilco song.
“I am an American aquarium drinker…”
The tone of her singing voice bothered Shaw. He never liked it. Her voice was flat
and lower than it should be for a girl her age. When she asked him why he never sang
with her he just told her that he didn’t have the voice for it. It hurt his throat.
“I want to hold you in the Bible-black predawn…”
Shaw watched homes pass by the window and Evey sang. In his periphery she
looked like she wanted him to join in and accompany her. He knew the words, but he
didn’t.
People pushing carts crowded the parking lot at the Safeway, loaded groceries for
dinner into their cars. Shaw and Evey left her car in the parking lot. Shaw asked what,
exactly, they were here for.
6
“I want to get some Swedish Fish.”
“Why?”
“I dunno,” she said. “I like them. Why not? Do you have anything better to do?”
He said that he didn’t and the pair split up to find the candy aisle. Shaw found it
first and stood at the end of the aisle, waited until Evey reappeared down the opposite end
of the one she went up, then waved her over. He stood there and wordlessly pointed at the
fish hung up on one of the steel shelving claws.
“Thanks, babe,” she said, and leaned up and kissed him, standing on her toes
again. She tried to put her tongue in but Shaw kept his mouth shut, thinking about the
piece of food, and pushed her off. Rougher than he meant to.
“Stop it,” he said. “People are looking.” Shaw jerked his head around back and
forth up the candy aisle. Evey laughed.
“No one’s looking. No one’s even here. Anyway. We got what we came here for.
Let’s just pay for the fish and go.” She nicked the brightly colored pack of fish off the
hanger and walked away. Shaw followed at a few paces, and let her get to the register
first.
They stood in line and Shaw looked at the relationships of celebrity couples
detailed in the magazines displayed on the rack over the perpetually rotating grocery
conveyor. This celebrity couple divorced, that one expecting a baby, this one destroyed
by crack. The cashier snatched up the fish. “Oh, I love these things,” she said, and clicked
her long pink acrylic nails against the package.
7
“Me too,” Evey said. “Him, not so much.” Her head lolled in Shaw’s direction
and she pointed her thumb. The cashier made an exaggerated fake-shock reaction, putting
her hand up to her cheek, nails reaching into her monstrous Miss Beehive 1963 hairdo.
She smiled uncomfortably when neither Shaw nor Evey said anything, and realized she
embarrassed herself at her involvement in someone else’s potential dispute. The pair
walked out of the store into the parking lot, further greyed and darkened in the evening
sun. Shaw asked Evey why she did that.
“Did what?”
“Pointed out that I didn’t like the fish.”
“Oh. I dunno. No reason?”
“You sounded resentful,” he said.
“Oh. Sorry.” She shrugged. “Want to go back to the park?”
Shaw said whatever was fine. This time Evey refrained and didn’t sing in the car
and they drove in silence, minus the low murmur of the radio. The car bumped along and
over the speed tables that stopped people who drove too fast among residential
neighborhoods where they might plow into kids tossing a ball back and forth across the
road. Evey pulled the car into the elementary school parking lot that stood adjacent to the
park, the place emptied of people, Friday evening and the sun just gone down. Kids freed
from school hours ago. Shaw and Evey laid down on a bench that overlooked the
basketball courts, her back against it and Shaw on top of her, head rested against her
stomach, the two formed into a centipede with the bench. The sky cleared – the rain cloud
8
and sun gone away and replaced by emergent moon and streetlight that chipped away at
the darkness in small places.
“It hurts my head to lean against your ribcage like this.”
“Yeah. Can you move down a little?” she asked. “It’s kind of hard to breathe with
you like that. I think you’re right on my diaphragm.”
Shaw squirmed downward, despite already being half hung off the bench and on
the concrete. Evey said yes when he asked if she was comfortable now. Then they were
silent until he spoke again.
“What do you think of moving in together when you turn eighteen?”
Evey tilted her head back and looked up. This signaled to Shaw that she was
thinking. He didn’t take it as being either good or bad. He made that mistake once and it
led to a lot of long arguments about how he shouldn’t assume what she was thinking –
it’d usually be the wrong thing if he tried.
“I dunno,” she said. “Maybe.”
“Can we move again? My back is starting to hurt. I haven’t worked out at all this
week.”
“Why do you work out so much, anyway? Is it really necessary to work out every
day?”
“Yes, it is. Disease, of the heart kind, is our number one weakness. Especially in
my family,” he said.
Evey sat up, dug around in her purse and took out some gum and chewed it. Shaw
smiled and turned his head away. Maybe it’d dislodge that piece of food. He wondered
9
how long it had stuck there. From her lunch? Or since breakfast, further deteriorated by
sitting in her mouth all day?
She offered Shaw a piece of the gum. He took it.
“Do you want to go back to the car now?” she asked. “There’s hardly any foot
traffic now. And it’s pretty dark out.” Shaw said why not, and they spit out the gum on
the ground, behind the bench where no one would step on it, and walked back to the
parking lot.
Shaw opened the back of the car and inspected the blankets Evey brought.
Clowns. A white blanket trimmed with red and plastered with cheap-looking homemade
stitchings of clowns that smiled and laughed at him. The other a plain blue blanket. Evey
caught him examining the clowns.
“I’ve had that blanket since I was a toddler, you know.” She dug around in her
purse again and took out her cigarettes, notched one out of the package and pulled it to
her mouth and lit it.
“Funny that you held on to it this long,” Shaw smoothed the rough corner of the
blanket over the edge of the seat.
“Funny that it’s lasted this long. I use it every day.” She flicked at her cigarette
and held up her index finger to indicate there was more while she took a drag. “Well, in
the winter. Not in the summer. Maybe our baby could use it someday.”
“Right. Are you ready yet?”
10
“Almost. Let me finish this.” She took a deep drag that burned out half the
cigarette, plopped the remaining cinder on the ground, extinguished it with the tip of her
Chucks and then spat.
Evey climbed in between the two blankets, Shaw on top of her, and he hooked his
foot around the door handle and shut it. Then they took off their clothes and fucked.
“Is something wrong?” Evey asked.
“No. You ask that every time.”
“It’s been like fifteen minutes, though. Let me try getting on top.” Shaw shifted.
Evey moved over to his side and then on top of him and they fucked some more. Her face
hovered above Shaw and he could smell the gum and cigarettes on her breath. He took
his phone out of his pants pocket to check it and she slapped it out of his hand.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” he said. “I just wanted to see if I had any new email.”
They fucked some more, Evey angrier than before. Eventually he softened and
fell out of her. Evey, frustrated, gave up and lay down and neither one touched the other.
Shaw looked out the window at the dim streetlamp hung over the car. Then he looked
back at Evey.
“Why are you crying?”
She wiped at her face with bundled hands. “This is too stressful.”
Shaw looked back at the streetlamp. “Why are you still smoking?”
“Is that all you have to say?”
“I dunno. I don’t understand how you got pregnant anyway. I never even came.”
11
“It isn’t like I can tell you. Precum, sperm hiding in pockets, it could have been
anything.” She stopped and wiped at her face again. “They taught us about that in sex ed
a few weeks ago.”
“Yeah, well. It doesn’t really matter. I don’t know what you expect me to do. At
least I’m here and I’m trying.”
When it was eight Evey said she had to go. She drove Shaw back to his car, still
parked in the now empty lot at the park, then kissed him goodbye. Shaw started to walk
back to his car and then turned and waved his hands and flagged her down.
“Do you have any cash?” he asked.
“What?”
“Don’t have any cash left. I need to stop and buy a bottle of water. I’m dying of
thirst after that.” Evey dug in her purse and took out a five. She handed it across the
passenger seat through the window to him.
“Keep it. Don’t worry about it.” They said their love you’s and she drove away.
Shaw stood and watched her go and then walked over to the gate leading to the
community pool. Darkness surrounded him, but the lights underneath the water were left
on and emanated a lot of light, and made the pool shimmer and weave at the surface
where the motors rippled the water. Shaw looked around to see that no one lingered in the
park, then put one foot up on the chain linking the gate together and hopped it. He landed
on his feet, climbed the ladder to the diving board and lay down, legs splayed over the
sides of the board, and winced at the blueballs starting to take hold of him. He unzipped
12
his fly and jerked off into the pool, then stayed for a moment, slowed his breathing until
it matched the fluctuations of the light in the water, and calmed himself.
Then he stood and zipped up his pants, adjusted the shirt that had become twisted
and damp from the water collected on the board, then climbed the fence again, and got in
his car and drove out of the lot.
On his way home he stopped at a gas station to get a bottle of water. All of the
lights shined on inside the station but the closed sign hung in the window. The same thing
happened with two more and he drove all the way back to Sacramento without finding
any.
13
NUMB
He awoke with his head resting in the cheap wiry grittiness of the hotel blanket
spread over the linoleum floor and the motion sensor lights off. Sern shawled the blanket
around him earlier, before he fell over and passed out. The lights clicked back on.
Drippings of greenish gray puke streaked down the side of the toilet bowl. He spit and
flushed it. The water swished down. He heaved, about to vomit again, suppressed it, and
tried to make himself stand on shaky legs. Halfway up his knee gave out and he
collapsed. He grabbed at the shower curtain and three of the rings ripped from the pole
and he slid. His cheekbone smacked the edge of the tub as he fell.
He moaned out a curse and again tried to stand, succeeding barely, hands locked
to the edge of the tub. His head throbbed and his hands went to his temples to feel the
blood pounding. He tested his ability to walk slowly to see if he might fall again. Where
was Sern, he wondered, and what time was it?
He staggered to the bathroom door and pulled it open. Light still filled the hotel
room, but not much. He guessed it to be around 7 o’clock, and any light spilled through
the window at this point probably emanated from the neon outside. Both beds were made,
flowered comforters tightly stuffed into the corners underneath the mattresses and a small
piece of foil-wrapped chocolate left on each pillow. Any memory of the maids cleaning
that day had vanished. Maybe they came while he slept.
He dragged his feet under him over to the window and pushed aside the set of thin
light curtains under the heavy woven ones that looked like quilts and were meant to keep
light out of the room if guests wanted to sleep.
14
Outside, the sun, dimmed enough that the electric lights started to come on and
push against impending night, hung low in the sky behind the buildings. Ray wondered if
the lights were always turned on, even during the day. The last pieces of sunlight
bounded away from the big pool the fountain shows danced in. Past that stood the replica
of the Eiffel Tower, a cluster of lights attached to it spinning around. Beyond that,
buildings. Just buildings. Places that looked as though they could have been ordinary
office buildings if they didn’t shine with so much color and light.
He took a bottle of springwater out of the sleek black minifridge under the
television. Five dollars it cost, according to the pricing sheet. Oh well, he thought. They
were already paying out the ass for the room, which Sern made a big deal about having
when they checked in. And yesterday Sern had opened a fifteen dollar thing of candy
beans, ate a few, and left the rest on the table.
Four days ago Ray and Sern got into their secondhand ’79 Sunbird with the
broken dome light and left Corpus Christi behind in its mirrors. All the drive they listened
to the trunk lid rattle incessantly. They planned to take one bag each; Sern ended up with
two. Ray said they didn’t need the rest of it and she said no, she did. She needed the
figurines her grandmother had left her and all the other gifts she ever received – someone
cared enough to go pick it out and buy it to give her. She also carried a rock inside her
bag with her everywhere, a large piece of granite, even though it weighed a lot. She never
complained about it, but Ray could tell when her shoulder started to hurt and she’d
excuse herself and ask him to hold it a while.
“Can we stop fucking around here?” Ray asked.
15
“Don’t be so angry. And watch it. Those kids over there can hear us.”
Sern leaned over the railing and looked out. Ray stood behind her, holding her
bag with his neck, and watched the kids run around the rest of the tour group. The
afternoon Colorado sun burned the back of his neck.
“I could push you over that railing, you know. Your neck would be broken before
you even knew what happened.”
“You’re too sweet for that,” Sern replied. She looked some more at the cliff
dwellings.
“We’ve already seen the Aztec Ruins, and the Cap-whatever Volcano, and
Carlsbad Caverns. How many more of these things do you need to see? It’s mostly just a
bunch of rocks anyway. How many pamphlets you need to tell you about rocks?”
“That’s not the point,” she said. “I know you’re not interested. I am.”
They spent nights at crummy motels in Alamogordo and Flagstaff. Sern didn’t
like them either.
“When we get to Vegas, can we stay at the Bellagio?”
“Doubt it. Too expensive.”
The lobby confirmed it for Ray. The clerk at the counter welcomed them and
asked if they needed help. Sern spoke up.
“Yes, room for two, please. And can it be one of the ones where you can see the
water show? The dancing fountains?”
16
Sern stood on her toes, both hands up on the counter, an overgrown child in a
miniskirt. The clerk drew his head back, smiled and nodded. He looked at Ray with some
sympathy in his eyes. Ray shrugged.
“That would be one of our Lakeview Deluxe rooms,” he said, in an accent
unidentifiable to Ray. He punched in some of the buttons on the keyboard and studied the
screen.
“It looks like we still have one available. For a rate of two hundred and nineteen
dollars per night.” Ray flinched. “Would you like me to book it for you?”
Ray said no at the same time Sern said yes.
“Can’t we get the room? Please?”
“Why do we need it?”
“This is supposed to be our honeymoon,” she said. “Isn’t that what you said? I
just want things to be nice.”
Ray stared off at the assorted colors of the fungi-like decorations, smooth on one
side and ridged on the other, hung on the lobby ceiling and reflecting more brightness
than even the lighting seemed to give off. He handed over four-hundred and fifty dollars
in cash from his wallet. The clerk said he needed a credit card. Ray asked why.
“Just for verification purposes, sir. As well as to serve as a deposit on the room.”
Ray’s face twisted. The clerk smiled.
“It is standard procedure,” he said.
Ray said fine and pulled the only credit card from his wallet sleeves. The clerk
held it out and squinted at it.
17
“Sir, this is a Sears card.”
“It’s fine,” Ray said. “Run it anyway.”
The clerk looked at him skeptically and then ran the card. It went through fine and
Ray and Sern took the elevator up. She lead him down the wrong hallway twice and it
took them almost ten minutes to find the room. She didn’t watch the dancing fountain
show that night.
Ray stayed up and watched for a few minutes while Sern snored on the bed.
Water shot up out of the artificial lake in jets hundreds of feet high, formed vertical
columns and then transformed into the shapes of animals and people, swayed back and
forth to the tune of “Born in the USA” over the hotel’s own closed-circuit television
channel, then fell. Eventually he got bored and sat down on the bed. He watched
Letterman riff and passed into sleep before the guests were invited on.
The next day they ate lunch at a taco shack outside downtown. An awning of fake
brown grass leaves sheltered them from the sun above and they both ordered the shrimp
tacos. The crusty Latino behind the counter asked if he could get a name for the order and
Ray gave his. Then they sat at a table.
“It’s bright today,” Sern said.
“A little.” Ray pushed his sunglasses up on his nose. They tended to fall down
whenever he started sweating a lot. Sern watched him while he opened his napkin
carefully and set down the fork and knife on the table, then tucked the napkin into his lap.
He put his chin in his hand and looked out across the street and desert-stricken lots past in
silence. Sern examined her shoe.
18
The Latino called out Ray’s name and he waved him over.
“Shrimp tacos for Ray,” he said, and set the plate down. “And for the Mrs,” he
said, setting the other.
“I’m not his wife.”
Ray smiled up at the man. “She’s my wife.”
“Well. Not yet,” Sern said.
The Latino man eyed them with a grin. “You get married here in Vegas?” he
asked.
“That’s what we’re here for,” Ray answered.
“By Elvis,” Sern added.
The Latino smiled and said good luck and hoped they enjoyed their meal and
marriage. Then he left them to eat. Afterwards Ray felt sick and they went back to the
hotel and he passed out.
He finished his springwater and set the bottle on the table. He could just refill it
from the tap, he thought, no sense in throwing it away and buying more five dollar
bottles, even if the desert tapwater tasted horrible. On his way out he found the door open
a hair – it stuck unless someone pulled it all the way shut. Sern must not have checked it
when she left. Maybe the phantom maids did it. Ray pulled it closed and left.
He took the elevator down. Some type of tour group scuttled around the lobby,
Japanese tourists, faces cloaked by ball caps and Nikon cameras stacked with oversized
lenses clicking away shooting pictures of the giant silver and gold horses near the lobby
doors. Ray pushed through them and walked into the buffet, where he studied the little
19
chalkboard sign they write the daily specials on in pink and green colored chalks. The
lobster dinner ran twenty-five ninety-nine and the all-you-can-eat buffet ran seventeen
ninety-nine. When the hostess asked if she could help him he said no thanks and left.
Outside the cool of evening replaced the heat of day. Ray took the steps up
through the parking garage and found the Sunbird still parked on the roof. The keys were
in his pocket and Sern probably didn’t want to wake him when she left. She was always
disappearing, though.
At the Gila cliff dwellings monument she left Ray alone for thirty minutes and he
walked around and looked at the mud homes built into the side of the cliffs. He thought
about just getting in the car and leaving her there, but decided against it in case she ever
found him again. When she came back, Ray stood, arms over the railing and looking over
an edge. She came up behind him and stood next to him until he noticed she was there,
and neither one spoke, and they left. She didn’t give any explanation and Ray figured
there wasn’t any need to ask. He could guess well enough.
He unlocked and opened the car door and kicked out a mess of Dasani water
bottles and empty fast food cups that clattered to the concrete. A cup in the holder still
filled with urine soaked a tangy odor into the car. Ray picked it up and hurled it away as
far as possible and then sat down and turned the key. The engine clicked and rattled as it
tried to turn over, then sputtered and stopped. It started on the second try. Ray put the
clutch in, moved the stick to first and drove down level after another until he reached the
street. Then he was outside and on the strip.
20
He thought about the strip, and how it seemed strange. How it wasn’t the way he
imagined it to be from seeing it in movies or hearing about it secondhand. How the
people handing out pamphlets about what seem to be prostitutes are really not prostitutes
at all. How they’re actually escort services, call girls and strippers that will come to your
hotel room and dance for you. How this has probably led to a lot of disappointed or angry
customers. How contrary to popular belief, prostitution wasn’t even legal there. He
looked it all up on the internet before leaving, thinking that it might come in useful. That
he might use it against Sern.
He drove, and looked at the flashing signs advertising “cheap” dinners along the
strip for eighteen ninety-nine. He wondered if real people ate in those places. The closer
he drove to the rumble of planes from the airport, the closer he came to the seedier,
rundown littered with trash side of the city that tourists never visited, where maids and
bellhops and waiters that worked at Caesar’s Palace lived in hovels disguised as
apartment blocks. Fewer and less lights, darker away from the strip. Eventually a small
place called Judy’s lit up the dark in his path with its half-burned-out neon lights strung
over a veneer of cracked olive green paint and rusted windowsills. Ray thought that it
looked like promising food – more so than the Bellagio, anyway. He pulled into a parking
lot crowded with eighteen-wheelers and semis, turned off the headlights and stepped out,
glad for the probably seventy-something degrees outside. During the day it sweltered at
over a hundred, and they spent their time outside running from one air-conditioned
building to another.
21
Judy’s crackled with the green neon signs hung high in blinded windows. Ray
swung open the glass door and the little bell rang. The cargo trucks in the parking lot
must’ve housed sleeping drivers since there weren’t a lot of people seated inside. No one
stood to greet him, but a rough and scratchy smoker’s voice seeped out from behind the
partition between dining area and kitchen that held up the window with the tray for
serving, real traditional diner-style. The voice told him to take a seat anywhere. There
were booths or barstools at the counter. He chose a barstool.
A truck driver sat on another stool a few seats down from Ray. He shoveled a mix
of scrambled eggs and pepper and sausage into his mouth.
“Been driving long?” Ray asked him.
The man lifted his unshaven face and sneered. Then he went back to eating. Ray
decided it better not to say anything else. After a minute the waitress came out from
behind the mock wall, old fashioned pink dress with white lace at the collar and sleeves,
like a doll outfit. Her skin was rough-looking and boot-like; desert living, Ray assumed.
Blonde hair now so dirtied it appeared to be turning brown. Ruth, it said, on the white and
red name badge pinned to her lapel. An elderly woman’s name, Ray thought, but it didn’t
seem like she could be any age in particular.
“What’ll you have?” she asked, the smoker’s voice again sandpapery enough that
it almost hurt his ears to listen to. He stopped himself from wincing. Ray pointed down
towards the trucker and said he’d have the same thing he was. She said okay and left
without smiling or writing it down. The trucker turned his head slightly in Ray’s
22
direction, but didn’t look at him. Just kept on chewing his food. A few minutes later,
things began to fry in the kitchen with a loud sizzle.
Ruth brought the trucker his bill, and he gestured to her to bend down and he
whispered in her ear. They looked at Ray, and Ruth snickered and went back to the
kitchen. The trucker left some money on the counter and stood, adjusted his hat and his
pants by his belt, then walked towards the door. Ray looked down at the fake woodgrain
countertop and avoided unnecessary eye contact. No point in adding any extra
awkwardness after that question earlier, he thought. But the trucker stopped behind him,
reached over and tapped Ray on the shoulder.
“Excuse me,” he said, in a Texan accent. “I’m sorry about havin ignored you
before. That was extraordinarily rude of me. Here. Accept my apologies.” He extended
his hand then, and Ray reached out to shake it, and noticed there was a card in it. He took
it.
“Foxy Girls,” he read aloud, and turned the purple and black embossed card over
in his hands. “What is this?”
The man sneered again in irritation. “What’s your name?”
“Name’s Ray,” he said.
“Pleasure, Ray. That there’s a gentlemen’s club,” the man said, measuring his
tone. “Go to the main bar and ask for Freddie. Tell him that Ron P. Jones sent you. Got
it?”
“Ron P. Jones,” Ray repeated, not thinking enough to ask him why.
23
“Good,” he nodded, and looked Ray up and down. “Say,” he said. “You wouldn’t
happen to be one of them lot lizards, would you?”
Ray asked him what he meant.
“A lot lizard.” Ron paused. “A lizard. Of the lot.”
Ray said he didn’t think that he was. Ron stood back and looked disappointed. He
rubbed his hand across his face, making a scratching sound, and said it was just as well.
“Anyway. Ron P. Jones. That’s how you get the special there.”
“Good to know,” Ray said. “Thanks. What is it you do, Ron?”
He tipped his cap up with his forefinger and gave a smile, missing a lower tooth.
“I do all kinds of things,” he said. “Truck driver, spiritual advisor, fortune teller,
game trader, male escort, bounty hunter, among numerous other things. I was even a
clown at a kid’s party once. I do whatever gets the job done. Whatever brings the money
in.” He leaned back on his dirty boots and grinned his toothy grin again.
“Huh,” Ray said. “Interesting.” He took a sip of the coffee Ruth dropped off and
burned his tongue some.
“That it is, my friend. You interested in any in particular? You strike me as the
kind of guy that needs some help, and I got plenty for anybody that dare ask.”
“I doubt you can help me with my problems,” Ray said.
“Well, supposin I could. What do you need?”
Ray looked at the man. He was an ordinary trucker, a common working man,
dressed in working man jeans and boots. An old t-shirt with pinprick holes around the
seams and some kind of design at the left breast. Hat gnarled by the sun and dirt. The
24
man’s unshaven face gave him a hollow look, his cheeks and eyes sunk much further than
they needed to be. But those eyes appeared to give way to something much deeper, and
teetered on the verge of seeing things no one else could, Ray guessed.
“Spiritual advisor. What exactly is it you do?”
Ron laid his arm down on the countertop and lowered himself into the barstool
next to him, getting so close that Ray leaned back a little bit. A faint odor of sweat reeked
from the man. He noticed Ray’s flared nostrils and barely perceptible shift backwards,
and apologized and moved back a bit in his seat. He explained that he drove from Maine
in just three days’ time and that didn’t leave much leisure time for showers or any other
amenities like that. When you were hired to do a job, sometimes you had to drive straight
on through, surviving on nothing but coffee to keep awake. The hours were long and took
a lot out of you. And that was why he hadn’t shaved in days and he scratched at his
beard. But when you were contracted for work, you got it done, as long as your daddy did
his job right in teaching you to do so. Ray said he understood what that was like.
“I always have back-to-back shifts,” he said. “I know it takes a lot out of you.”
“And what might you do?” Ron asked.
“I’m just a shift manager. But I have to be there a lot of the time cause our place
is understaffed and most of what goes on there I have to make sure it gets done right. Not
just supervising – actually doing the work. Sern doesn’t seem to get that.”
Ron asked who Sern was. Ray said that was his fiancé.
“We came here to Vegas to get married,” Ray said, and took another sip of his hot
coffee. “We just found out a month ago that she got herself pregnant. And I said to
25
myself when I found out, that although this wasn’t the best situation, I was going to do
the right thing. Be the good Catholic. My dad worked all his life in a steel mill to do right
by his family. I wouldn’t consider myself capable of doing any less.”
Ron nodded. “It ain’t a situation I haven’t seen before,” he said. “But it’s good to
see moral people these days. My daddy was the same.”
“Just wish Sern was that way,” Ray said. Ron asked what he meant by that.
“Well. She’s a sex addict. Always has been, I guess. But she doesn’t mean
anythin by it. It’s a medical condition. So she does whatever she needs to, and she always
apologizes and cries and feels real bad about it. So I just say okay.” He paused. “I intend
to help her work it out.”
Ron cleared his throat and said that was a hell of a situation. “People can only
make excuses so far. At some point people have to be responsible for their own actions
and behavior. Ain’t nothin else that you can do to help them if they don’t want it or the
responsibility. But it’s hard to get to that point if you enable.”
Ray asked him what he meant.
“When you say it’s okay,” he said, “you encourage bad behavior.”
“You’re probably right.” Ray sighed. “Just the other day, I told her I didn’t so
much want to get married by an Elvis impersonator in Vegas. I said we should be married
by the Catholic church with family there. She didn’t want any of that.”
“You seem like a smart man,” Ron said. Ray looked at him and opened his mouth
to say thanks when he spoke again. “I think you know how to make the right decision.
You just need to not let pride or anythin like that get in the way.”
26
Ray kept his mouth closed.
“Good luck to you, sir,” Ron said. “And good luck with your lady friend. Enjoy
and take care of yourself.” Then he tipped his cap up and turned on his boots and
wobbled out the glass door, waving his shoulderblades back and forth. He went out into
the dark and the parking lot. Ray turned back to the counter and noticed the waitress
watched him.
“Do you know him?”
“Sort of,” she said. “He stops in here every so often on his way through. Has a
weird manner. Interesting guy though. What’d he want with you?”
Ray flipped up the Foxy Girls card in between the first two fingers of his hand.
She nodded. “Right. Everyone here knows that place. He say anything else?” Ray
told her about the special.
“Hey,” he said, and she stopped walking back to the kitchen. “What’s a lot
lizard?”
She laughed and gave a dismissive wave, as if he were just teasing.
“No, really.”
She laughed again and shouted through the open partition into the kitchen. “Hey,
Harry. This guy doesn’t know what a lot lizard is.” A hulking bald man with a mustache
unfurled to his ears stuck his head up through the opening and looked at Ray. Then he
opened his mouth wide and gave a hoarse, silent laugh, looked at Ruth, and then they
laughed together.
27
Ray put his head down and looked at the woodgrain countertop. Ruth went back
to the kitchen, laughing all the way.
Ray looked around at the diner. Mostly empty. A young girl with braided black
hair and a nose ring argued with a guy in a hoodie, probably her boyfriend, at a booth
over in the corner about whether or not she should be drinking, what did it matter if she
were pregnant. It was just one beer. She said it was her choice and he kept telling her not
to do it and they didn’t have any money left neither. So what, she said. The money part
sounded familiar to Ray.
The bell at the top of the counter clinged and Ruth brought the plate out and told
Ray to enjoy it. Then she went out front of the diner and smoked one of her slims. No
more customers to deal with. The eggs and sausage and pepper floated mildly in grease,
not as good as it looked. Typical diner food. Ray ate quickly. When he was done he paid
for his bill and stood.
The car started on the first try this time as he sunk into the black vinyl of the
Sunbird and he drove back towards the hotel, even though he figured Sern wouldn’t be
back until two or three. It was only 10:30 and she generally stayed out late.
But when he opened the door of the room, Sern lay there, on the bed with long
wheat-hair spread all around her and eyes on the television, watching the news. She
looked at Ray and mumbled something unintelligible. Ray asked her where she’d been.
“Out,” she said. He asked her where that was.
28
“Some of the hotel staff took me out for some drinks. Really nice guys. And we
ended up at a party but I started feeling really sick, so I came back.” Ray nodded and said
of course she did.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Nothing.” He sat down on the bed and looked at her. “What did you take
tonight?”
She said she didn’t know what they were. The guys just gave them to her and she
took them. Ray nodded and said of course she did.
He watched the news with her. They ran some story about a crazy man who
kidnapped and molested children. Ray found himself too distracted to pay attention.
“So how many of them did you fuck?”
“What’s it matter,” she said. Ray looked at her and then turned off the television
and threw the remote against the wall hard. It didn’t shatter but bounced off. Then he laid
down on the bed on his side.
“Come on,” Sern said quietly. “Don’t be like that. We need to talk about stuff.”
Ray didn’t answer.
“Ray?”
“No,” he said sleepily. “I’m tired.”
29
IN HEAVEN
Baby George Michael tottered around the kitchen, tinfoil hat with antennae ticked
up in back fitted tightly over his head. He tugged at Mother’s pantleg and she ignored it,
flurried about with the work of making breakfast. Mother worked in every corner of the
kitchen at once, making pancakes, or eggs, or toast. That morning the gossamer white
curtains hung low over the bluesilled panel windows let the rising sun shine in. The
farmyard outside showed us its secrets; the things animals and the world did when they
thought no humans were watching. I watched the cows roam and the chickens root.
Mother didn’t answer the picking at her leg. Just went about making food. She
refused to accommodate the picky eaters in our family for many years, and everybody ate
the same thing. Eventually the complaints got to her and she relented. One day she made
pancakes for Grandpa, eggs for Uncle Lemon and I, and toast for Baby George Michael
since that’s all he would eat. Mother herself ate yogurt every day. I think she begrudged
us slightly the more for having to make everyone something different, at least during
breakfast time, though I know she tried not to show it.
She bent at the knee to pick up Baby from the floor, and looked old and hunched,
the way Grandma looked before she died, when she bent over the stove to make dinner in
that very plaid and white kitchen, shaky joints and matchwood bones babied to save them
from giving away. Mother patted the boy on the back and sat him up in his chair with a
groan. Then she went back to pouring batter.
Baby George Michael leaned down and picked at the splintering leg of his
wooden high chair. Formerly the chair belonged to me, and, a long time ago, to Uncle
30
Lemon. Mother told me that Grandpa built it himself when she was my age. Now the
original fire-engine red paint flaked off, stripped almost to the wood. Some of the wood
itself so thin the chair might fall apart when Baby sat in it any given day.
“What’s ‘dead’ mean?” Baby asked the room.
In an instant we became quiet and something sizzled on the stove. Uncle Lemon
put down his paper and looked at Mother. I looked at the empty chair placed next to
Grandpa and swallowed with some difficulty, afraid of what they were about to say. Baby
George Michael picked up his silver fork and pushed it around on the empty plate in front
of him. The fork scraped at the blue pattern on the plate, and created a loud screeing that
seemed to silence everyone further while Baby waited for an answer. Grandpa always
spoke first after a prolonged quiet like that, and he put in his teeth so he could talk better.
The rest of us sat and listened while the dust moved around in the streams of sunlight
spilled from the windows.
“’Dead’ means you’re worm food,” he said, pointing a finger down at his empty
plate. “When you’re dead, it means you ain’t livin’ no more. So they put you in the
ground and you get eaten up by the worms. It means there’s no more you left. The you
that’s you is all used up. That’s where your great old Grandmother is right now. Dead and
gone.”
Mother frowned at him and she spooned runny eggs onto the plate in front of me.
“Don’t tell the boy that. You’ll scar him for life,” she said. Baby George Michael looked
at her expectantly, for her to give a better answer, and she went back to the stove. Then
31
he looked at everyone else, and waited for someone to explain to him. Uncle Lemon put
his paper back up over his face.
“If there’s no more you, then where does the you go?” Baby asked.
Mother responded quickly to avoid giving another answer over to Grandpa.
“To heaven,” she said.
Baby George Michael stayed silent for a moment.
“Where’s heaven?” he asked.
I began to open my mouth when I noticed Grandpa watched me from the corner
of his eye, and thought better of it. Mother told me when she was a child, Grandpa’s
temper always ran hot, and he pulled off his belt for any reason he found. By the time I
came around, he calmed down a lot, and I got away with most things. He dealt when I
needed to be dealt with out of kindness and love. His belt only came off for me once
when I took his keys and drove his old blue Ford around the yard while no one else was
home and accidentally killed one of the chickens. He said getting spanked was for my
own good. His look then looked like the same disapproving one, so I stared down at the
blue and white plaid tablecloth and forked more egg white into my mouth. Mother
flipped pancakes over one-handedly and answered.
“Heaven isn’t a place you can go, hon. It’s a place for the mind.”
She stopped then and appeared to think about what she said, like it was something
she hadn’t planned to say but somehow did, maybe to stop Grandpa from talking again,
and now needed time to consider.
32
“It’s a place where the mind goes when someone dies,” she said, and pushed the
pancakes out of the pan onto Grandpa’s plate. “They don’t need their body anymore and
then they go to heaven. In heaven, everyone has their good things.”
Grandpa cleared his throat and coughed into his napkin. The sound of a hard lump
of something thumped against the cloth and he folded it up on the inside and set it back
down on the table.
“Horseshit,” he grumbled through his teeth. “Ain’t no heaven. Don’t nothin’
special happen when you die. Why should anythin special happen? When I retired after
forty years of work, I got a watch. When I retire from life I ain’t expecting no everlasting
bliss.” Grandpa stopped to take a swig of his coffee, black and rank. It smelled like it sat
in the percolator since the previous morning.
“What I will be expecting is nothing at all,” he said. “No. Nothin’ special at all.
You know that’s what happens if you’ve ever seen a dead man. When you look into his
eyes.”
“Dad, please,” Mother said.
Grandpa took another sip of his coffee and swished it through his teeth before
swallowing it.
“I remember I killed this boy back in the war. He couldn’t have been no more
than seventeen or eighteen year at the time. I was twenty-six. Was at sunset, and I
remember our troop crossed this big field without cover, but that was the way we had to
go. As we come up over this hill we found an enemy camp, only seven or eight men
either resting of eating some canned beans. I remember the beans cause I could smell em
33
a ways away. We tried to take the men quietly, by surprise, but they went for their guns
so we fired. And then I remember looking at the boy layin there in the grass after it was
done, and even though the light was shinin’ off everything around, all kinds of tranquillike, there wasn’t none shining off that boy’s eyes. Wasn’t nothin’ there at all.” He
looked down at the pancakes on his plate and then jabbed at it angrily, as if it were about
to skitter away from him. He ran the stack through with his fork.
“Horseshit,” he grumbled again.
Uncle Lemon eyed Grandpa caustically while he talked, and chewed his toast and
eggs. Uncle Lemon and Grandpa always had a tenuous cord of a relationship between
them. According to Mother, most of the belt-pulling when she was my age was due to
Uncle Lemon. His birth name was not actually Lemon, but Garrett – we only called him
Lemon because he was never without one. He ate them and said they strengthened your
bones; he rubbed them on his bald head and said the citrus grew back long-lost hair; he
told me he even took a lemonjuice bath every New Year’s Day for luck. I asked him if it
was true and he gave me a wink and told me to try it myself to see. Uncle Lemon’s face
even looked like he always sucked a lemon, scrunched at the sides, a result of some burns
he suffered back in the war. But Garrett tantrumed and misbehaved his way through
childhood, and kicked and screamed against Grandpa all the way while Mother stood by
and watched. The worst he ever did was to take the keys to Grandpa’s truck and drove it
off the yard and into the river. Mother told me Grandpa chased after it the whole way and
screamed furiously when he pulled Garrett out of the sinking truck and waited two hours
34
for the tow to show up and haul it from the muddy water. Garrett got the belt every day
for a week after that.
Uncle Lemon took a bite and looked at Grandpa. “Which war was that, dad?”he
asked him, mouth full of toast.
“The Great War,” Grandpa sneered at him, and twisted his lip like old flypaper in
summer heat to expose the fake teeth beneath.
Uncle Lemon nodded and twirled his mustache in his fingers and took another
bite of toast. “Mm. Yeah. They were all great, weren’t they?” He looked down at his
plate and chewed. “No,” he said carefully, “I think when you die it’s similar to what
happened to the guy who hit that kid and then took off in his boat to Australia.”
Mother gave Baby Scabies his toast and sat down to eat her yogurt, then looked at
Uncle Lemon with an eyebrow raised and asked him what he meant by that.
“A couple of years ago there was this millionaire not paying attention to the road
that hit some kid playing ball and just took off. The kid ended up in the hospital and
actually lost an arm on account of it having been run over and mangled. But the other
kids playing stickball saw the guy and he was eventually caught. It turned out he was
drunk when he done it, and the news stations got wind of it because those kids had
identified his car, and his face got plastered all over the news, so he got caught. Of
course, since he was rich, he made bail, and he took off. He owned a boat, a yacht, and
got it into his head that he’d take off for Australia, of all places. I don’t know why he’d
go there in particular, but that was what he planned on doing. But on his way there – and
this is how he described it – he damn near encountered unholy hell of the seven-plagues
35
old-testament style. Evidently he wasn’t as good a navigator as he thought and didn’t
much know where he was going, and he run himself right into a storm, and a particularly
nasty one at that. Lightning crashed down over the water and waves spilled over the top
of the boat at every turn. So what happened then, is that the mastpole snapped off in the
wind, and the cabling traveling behind it hit him so hard that it completely destroyed his
arm and crippled his boat. With the bad arm, there wasn’t anything he could do to fix the
boat for himself. So he sailed on for days and lived with the excruciating pain in his arm,
which he wrapped with an old shirt. But he was unable to do anything except lay out on
the deck until he caught sight of some American vessel. I think I read by that time he also
had got scurvy or something like it. Now when he saw this boat, he could either signal it
down with his flare gun or ignore it and hope for some other way out in the days ahead,
which, in his condition, may not have numbered too many. So he decided to go ahead and
signal. They rescued him, and the authorities figured out who he was and placed him
under arrest. And he got the medical attention he needed, but I’ll be damned if he didn’t
lose that mangled arm to save his life. The last I heard of him he was in prison for the
whole ordeal.”
Baby George Michael slipped out of his chair and left the kitchen. No one seemed
to notice. Uncle Lemon stopped and ate the last of his toast in a single bite. He chewed it
and swallowed it and then finished speaking.
“If that ain’t some type of cosmic karma and proof of the existence of God or
some other thing like it, well, I don’t know what is. See, I think that when you die, it’s
just like what happened to that man – you either repent and make right or you end up
36
having all the evils you done to others done back to you. Maybe twice or thrice fold.
Maybe that way everyone has to go to their own version of hell or purgatory and pay for
what you done before you can earn the right to go to heaven.”
Uncle Lemon looked around. “There,” he said. “I’m finished.”
Mother and Grandpa held their heads down and chewed their food quietly. I
looked at mom and then at the empty chair beside Grandpa again. On the back of it hung
Dad’s blue windbreaker. Mother told me once that she wore that jacket more than Dad
ever did. Whenever they went anywhere and it was cold, he draped it around her
shoulders to keep her warm, even if it meant he would be cold. On his last leave he told
me that I could wear it until he got back.
“Dad’s not coming home, is he?” I asked.
“No,” Mother said, her voice barely audible. “He’s not.”
Grandpa breathed out a heavy sigh. Baby George Michael waddled back in
through the kitchen door, holding Crunchy, the pet cat, in his hands. Crunchy appeared
lifeless and limp in Baby’s arms, and the boy stroked the fur of his back. When Mother
looked down Baby held the cat up by his arms for Mother to see it plainly and clearly.
“I think Crunchy is gone to heaven,” he said.