It pervades every waking moment. You picture her in the leaded panes. In the faux hardwood. In the wrinkled tube of Neosporin, resting across the washbasin lip. In the kitchen walls, repainted harvest gold. Splitting between television static. The second Swiss army knife. The second seam of herringbone stitches, harboring nickel. The linen dress fabric. Little foxes bounding, pawing, howling with stubby, black fangs against microscopic stars. The second Drexall Robertson. Cheeks sunburnt and sallow, sandblasted by the backwash of turboprops and burning tar.
“Hey. I’m gonna be out late tonight.” Elvira says. The morning sunlight’s barely stooping to the edge of the kitchen window and she already has a toothpick stuck to her lips. It droops low in a circular, mopey way.
“Isn’t it a weekend?”
“I told the boss I was gonna go out for a couple drinks,” she replies. “And I’ve been putting it off for too long. Far too long.” There’s a patch of darker, damper gray rippling down the fabric on her t-shirt. Whirlpools—coiling and bunching up and hardening into jagged, pinpointed edges before making contact, touching behind the cracked silkscreen print of Sailor Moon. Hands outstretched. Head distorted. Shirking. Bending away as a lanyard gently clicks and she goes for the door.
The heat? How can you defy the heat?
Before you can choke down a glass of orange juice, her Chevelle kicks alive, tires and tarnished chrome flinging a trail of dust as it hurtles past saguaros and disembodied cattle guards. Past the septic tank. Downgrade. Past town. Past the piles of pitch: banking up like snowdrifts behind the skeletons of mine hoists and half-eroded mesas. Dimpled, caved-in gray making a straight, unyielding arc to pause—be inhaled—into a pulsating, shiny strip of black.
The morning passes in short, intermittent waves. You finish the glass, touching a finger to the rim—still sticky, speckled with bits of pulp, concentrate and chapped lip. You flick on the tap. The water flows lukewarm, squealing as it works at a clogged bend somewhere behind the wallpaper—erasing all the powdered sucrose. All the crimson, curdling brown. All the resistance.
Cronkite and Cobain softly murmurs from a transistor radio as fox print swishes, gently batting against your knees as you busy yourself. Reset the circuit breakers under the stove. Auxiliary power to main. Sweep the foyer. Wipe down a barren icebox. Disentangle the cobwebs above the radiator, stretching between two eagle figurines. A wastebasket is toppled over in the den, its contents: chocolate tinfoil, Marlboro butts, five cent postage stamps—presidents and despots and lush, detached palms, plastic shriveling under alcohol debonder—spilling out onto the fraying carpet. Stretching paychecks with pennies. Cheap.
Always cheap. Pitiable. The sunlight was creeping now, spilling and splitting into flecks through the window over the television. Billions. Trillions of joules of heat—light—striking, stepping down to burrow granules of hardened earth and shale and tentative sand: enough to tomb cobalt, strip flesh from wayward bison and antelope, but the strip under the recliner never saw a dime. You finish picking up the last bits of paper and saran wrap, slowly standing to your feet. The neck of the trash bag stretches in your palm. Snaps. Grows heavy. Taut.
You step outside, trash bag in tow. For a moment you linger on the stoop, listening to the tinkle of a ceramic wind chime and the faint pulse and buzz of an wasp’s wings somewhere behind vinyl siding. At noon the town below seems to rise to eye level, exposed aluminum, concrete and stucco spreading out like painted solder. Circuitry. Magnifying as your boots slant downhill, the clay and sagebrush and Chevelle ruts merging into cracked asphalt.
The post office was the easiest to be reacquainted with. You learned to recognize government buildings over time through their skeletons. Perpetually broken air conditioning, fans rattling like a smoker’s lungs in their metal cages, the gentle whoosh of air through exposed ductwork. Low power emergency lights in maintenance corridors, where scuffed linoleum gives way to concrete flooring and stale air. Windowless enclaves of eroded limestone and flimsy drywall playing host to dead-end postcards and topographical maps. You move swiftly, grateful for the moment of respite, however inconsistent. Hugging the walls, shoulders straight, elbows bent upright. Index extended along the curve in the bag’s plastic.
The dumpster by the rear gapes half full. Fling it forward into the wilted bouquet of desert lilies. Into the potted fern, ceramic shattered, fronds peppered with cigarette burns. Into maggots—clumped around the outer ridges of a half-eaten kiwi. Stragglers. Inching past the bodies of those paralyzed, pinned between the heat and the sticky juices oozing from green-black-crimson coated flesh.
Jog down the main drag. Avoid the little park—a square of melted sludge that once passed for Astroturf. The gazebo. The emaciated, plywood-boarded excuse of a library. The military surplus store, with the orangutan skull and disassembled Chinese carbines and long, slender stilettos clawing up behind darkened, reinforced glass.
You wonder why here, of all places. You know, logically. A place to lay low, relax, serve in some lesser capacity, teaching those who think they know better that time makes a fool of us all. Nothing glamorous, but nothing really is. Might as well get groceries while you’re out; see if the store’s still open. Fifty-fifty shot today. The legs start once more, then start to tingle and burn as the brickwork and false-front facades of Main Street thin out to meet the interstate. That’s all that’s keeping this place still running, really. Gas stations probably bring in about more income than anything else.
It’s not a far walk to the supermarket, but under the oppressive sunlight it’s exhausting just the same. A mid-century modern mirage—low concrete arch doorways and steel mesh framing translucent panes. All hard angles. Neon tubes wink: Open. Good. The air conditioning might be on, at least. Duck inside, regain your composure. Check your surroundings, look around, take notes on your environment. It’s empty today, no one else seeming to be stupid enough to get groceries when it’s this hot out. There’s a low droning through the PA system, some 60 Hertz hum. Enough to set you on edge, but nothing more. A glimpse of a leg, clothed in cheap khaki, glances by through a gap in the shelves. You catch your hand drifting to your dress pocket. More than likely the attendant - someone new this time? No matter. Best to get this over with.
Meats sit in a refrigerated case. Saran wrap catches your face, contents underneath melding together. All too reddish. Too immaculate—gristle and tendon and bone: steak, sirloin, lamb chops sliced and bedded in wilted parsley. You mentally pick out a package of ground turkey before settling on the routine: one swift, continuous run with the basket. A much better method than blindly fumbling around. Move on past the fridge with beverages, carbonated and fermented. Spaghetti would be nice. Angel hair and butter and sauce. Some ice tea to wash it all down. A lager for Elvira. She liked the foreign, lightly sweetened varieties. Polish. Thai. Japanese, maybe? No buzz for you. Once, it was a momentary pastime. A momentary antidote. A momentary analgesic.
“You need help, ma’am? That top shelf seems–”. The fluorescent lights overhead buzz and flicker. Creep into the shiny, rounded corners of his glasses. “Seems a little bit too high for ya.” One strut is posed too high above his ear. One strut was always too high above his ear.
A swell was coming now, burbling gray, foamy, tainted milky white and violet. What was it? Tomato paste? One of your palms plays arrestor, clenching tight around the other wrist. Tomato puree? Or the one with the blended garlic? It tensions. Shakes. You feel the joints track. Loosen. He’s reaching now, the tips of his sneakers bunching up, flashing a little grin to the security mirror high above. The clip-on tie beneath his pudgy chin is becoming undone. That same, slow bite with the frontal tooth. Stubble, little dots peppering between half-rendered burn marks. An ivory bottom incisor. And the faint outline of a rabbit's head, sticky with shaved, straight edged toffee and gum spirit. Once, it was toying with menthols. Once, it had crushed a brass star. Once, kneeling behind the central steel column of a munitions warehouse, the cinder blocks made warm by condensation and modern Greek fire, you felt a Garand sling pop loose from the night guard’s fractured collarbone—raising the barrel, the tritium sights drifting, sparkling with fragments of stained glass and powdered marble barely wafting above the floor in shallow plumes. The red nail lacquer almost looks like blood, streaking oak brown and crusting oxide. Exhale. Tighten into figure eight. Swing. The bolt snaps. Jams midway forward. Sticks.
Clams shut.
Step outside, into the sun, light searing your eyes. Catch your breath, make note of your surroundings. Assess the situation, ensure your safety. Training kicks in as your breath steadies, ribs straining against adrenaline surges; all the while you remain stony-faced. He’d be proud if he could see you now, you think. Maybe not. No exit forms filed. The domestic life doesn’t suit you, he’d say. His thoughts don’t matter now. Case the parking lot. Someone here knows something they shouldn’t.
Lances of sunlight reflect off the windows of cars, their metal skins burning up in the desert heat. Your eyes acknowledge, then deflect. The table mesa on the horizon beyond the blur of minivans and semi trucks seems to quiver, folding into buzzard flocks and distant thunderstorm formations—muggy skin and radio handsets, superimposed with biting flies and borders demarcated by low murmurs and dry rot and magnetic tape leeching powder over scabs. Parking lots, airstrips, bars, and secure tents; it all blends together when you get home, they say. Riding high and mighty across the hollow platitudes—the paperwork, the tentative shadows, the clockwork monsoons, the mosquitoes paddling in sugar water and DDT, the breathing of Elvira’s chest, coiled up on the couch. The shallow rhythm nullifying, scratching, smothering out your own.
Only one car in the employee parking lot. Someone’s making your job easier. Take a note of the plate, gather your breath, and gingerly place your hand on the revolver. The foxes swish. Stamp. Part open for a deeper pocket in the white muslin lining. Smooth Bakelite, studded and ribbed and cool compared to your burning hands. Lead azide and file marks and nitrocellulose embraced against your body. Gather the courage to step inside once more, the doorbell cheerfully announcing your arrival.