I turned my high-beams on, then off again. Not much difference. Same 200 feet of double yellow cutting to my left at about 105 mph, same rough-edged road. No shoulder. Shrubs made of paper. I could have driven with my lights off.
Something people don't realize about California is that a lot of it is rural. Get inland a bit, into the mountains near the Cleveland National Forest, skid around a little on Route 3. Once you get far enough north to pass the mobile homes you're in some real nature. The beauty of the desert isn't something that offers itself easily—it has to be found. No one paints landscapes full of tumbleweeds. But it's beautiful, if you don't think about the odd homegrown meth lab that explodes twice a year, drawing out the droves of cops and ambulances. When the smell hits you from the new clearings of the chipping bodies being dragged out it's hard to think about shadows under rocks and fragrant sage undergrowth. But most of the time it's nice.
At about eleven, I pulled off the road onto a dirt turnout bracketed from the wilderness by a brittle wood building named Stagecoach Inn. The engine knocked for a few seconds after I turned it off.
Love in the desert can be a sad thing.
First thing that hit me was the smell of hand-rolled cigarettes, and construction dust. Always construction dust in these places. Not good dust, either - not the live smell of a good A-Frame. Concrete. Road dirt. Desert dirt, the kind that's so dry water beads on it as if it were oil. It floated around in the cheap brown glow of the nicotine-coated 60-watters, indistinguishable almost from the leathery clientele nursing their longnecks.
There were tables arranged on the floor where couples and would-be couplers sat talking. I sat at the bar. I learned long ago to sit at the bar.
When you walk into a place like that wearing a pair of Dockers and a little dress shirt the ladies usually get real friendly real quick. It's either that or they smirk your ass into the night, which since they're usually wrapped around the arm of a mechanic who's read nothing but gun magazines his whole life is probably a favor. Before five minutes had passed a little dyed blond thing slid up quietly on the stool next to mine. She looked at me sideways a couple times and said hi.
She had the voice of a little girl. The body too, except for the sun tattoo almost eclipsed on her thigh by the shifting hem of her cutoffs. That, and the years of sun and dirt, made her a contradiction. A woman-child. The sweet ache of physical insecurity came off her in waves.
'Hey there,' I said after a good pause.
'Hey,' she said. 'What brings you here? You look a little out of place.'
I made a big show of looking down at my clothes. 'Oh? What makes you say that?'
'... ... A few things.'
For the first time she looked me straight in the eyes. I knew then that she'd spotted me as a fool, probably had the second I'd walked in. I noticed the narrow strap of her small bra on her shoulder behind her cotton tank top.
'I've got a long drive home. Figured I'd stop in for a drink.'
She smiled a little. '... You haven't ordered a drink yet. Where do you live?'
I glanced at the bartender and cursed myself for losing her eye contact. The second I looked away she signaled him and ordered us two rum and cokes.
I had to think for a second. 'Anaheim,' I said. 'I come out here some weekends to hike. It's beautiful here.'
I continued, 'Do you live here?'
I continued again, 'Oh, my name's Chris. Nice to meet you.'
I extended my hand, knowing that I had probably arranged for myself a cold shower. I was a little releived when she took it. She had a strong handshake. All women should have a strong handshake.
'I'm Dani,' she said. 'Nice to meet you, Chris.'
She smiled a lot. It seemed as though she was always smiling, and not falsely. This was someone who was genuinely happy. She had the kind of happiness that one acquires only as a result of need: the will to feel good despite hardship. The best kind of happy. I found her at the same time fierce and painfully endearing. This shapeless girl of the dust had me wrapped around her little finger.
The bartender set our drinks down without a word. I got started on mine real quick. Love in the desert can be a sad thing.
So we talked. About the things you talk about when you're trying to get a feel for someone, without saying anything except for what is communicated without words. Courtship is the ultimate amateur theater.
She lived a few miles up the road in one of the trailers I'd pass on my way out here, out on the edge of the wilderness. I knew that the tweekers set up shop there because it was far away from everything, and their homes were like razorburned hairs on the dusty outcroppings. But Dani showed no signs of drug use.
When for the first time in awhile someone moves on top of you there is a feeling afterward like floating in the ocean: the shock of an equilibrium that has opened itself to the movments of another.
Hours later. Two, maybe three in the morning. Stagecoach Inn was closed. Dani is a sloppy kisser. My car was filled with a smell like mud and the stink of saliva on skin. It was too hot for the windows to fog up, but there was no one around to see anyway.
Dani made a lot of sounds, moaning in that little girl voice.
When you walk into a place like that wearing a pair of Dockers and a little dress shirt the ladies usually get real friendly real quick. You are not one of these bags of road-grimed leather barbecuing the weekends away on the frayed liner of a Ford longbed. You are hope.
'Come home with me,' she sighed a few seconds after I finished. 'Come home with me.' Her hands were cold and cupped under my jaw, her forehead pressed against mine. Her tiny breasts almost made cleavage pushed together between her arms. I knew she'd spotted me as a fool the second I'd walked in. But that hadn't mattered to her.
'I can't.'
'I have a sleeper,' she said after a few seconds. Her eyes were closed. 'In the living room. It folds out into a twin.'
'... What?'
'I don't know. I just ... I don't know. Maybe you'd rather sleep on the couch.'
Dani's refrigerator was at least forty years old and must have been a hand-me-down from her mother.
She pulled two Sam's Club sodas out of it and brought one to me on the sleeper. When she sat down next to me she avoided eye contact again; I knew why.
'I like your place,' I said.
She stayed quiet a minute. 'What time do you have to be home tomorrow?'
'No time in particular. I'd like to get to work early because I have a lot to do.'
'What's her name?' she asked.
My heart stopped. I didn't say anything.
'Nevermind,' she said. 'Don't worry about it. If the sleeper gets uncomfortable my bed is a king. Good night, Chris.'
'... Good night, Dani.'
I awoke sometime before dawn and the alcohol had worn off. I sat up for a few minutes and looked around; I could hear Dani breathing in the bedroom. For the second time that night I felt the saccharin bloating of the desire to use another body. I remembered that her hair had not smelled like cigarettes even though she had been in a tavern; fingertips tracing the tattoo on her thigh; rough and measured scratching of moving hips like sandpaper on wood.
I wanted her in the worst way and I felt sick.
Without a sound I dressed myself and walked out the front door. I had planned to start my car and get on the road without turning on my headlights so that she would stay asleep, but I saw her silhouetted in the window against the bronze light of her bedroom. She was awake and knew what was happening but did not move.
I think I saw her head turn a little when my tires spun on the highway.
I headed North on Route 3, toward Hemet. Before you get to the city you graze the eastern edge of the Cleveland National Forest. The trees are thin here but they struggle into the spaces of the winding roads, collecting at their bases a bone-dry latticework of dead brush. The firemen have unwrapped many cars from these trees.
After I'd gone about ten miles, I glided off the road between two fat pines and followed a thin trail nearly overgrown with sage into a clearing I'd discovered there long ago, by accident, about a hundred yards from the main road. One could only discover this clearing by accident. I shut off the lights, then the car.
Then I walked around to the back and opened the trunk.
There she was, all curled up. She was nine, maybe ten years old. I'd met her at the general store that morning while she was buying milk for her mother. I didn't know what her name was; I hadn't asked. If she had been alive her knees might have bruised her chin during the ride over. Her hair was over her eyes and the smell of her shampoo drawn out by the rising lid made me dizzy. I would have to go back for her clothes.
This one had died hard. The best way. Out here bodies wear away faster when you don't bury them: you'd be surprised how much wildlife there is.
The engine knocked while I pulled her out and set her on the ground.
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