“What’re you doing out here all by yourself?” I said.
He squinted up at me and shook his head. “Just thinking.”
“Those thoughts taking up the whole bench or is there room for me?”
He scooted over and I sat next to him, watching the traffic. I wanted to give him time to say whatever was on his mind. Except he didn’t, so I asked what he was thinking about.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I think I worry too much.”
“Worry about what?”
“Nothing… everything.”
“Think you can narrow that down a little? Maybe pick a spot somewhere between Genesis and Revelations?”
He frowned like he didn’t appreciate being pushed, then crossed his arms and leaned back on the bench like If she’s gonna sit here, I may as well talk about it.
“I’m just thinking about Zeke and TheresaAndJim and what’s down the road, and hoping that we did the right thing and that we’re doing the right thing and what’s going to happen when we’re done doing what we’re doing. Worrying is what old farts like me do when we feel like the world’s getting away from us.”
“You’re not that old,” I said. “Age is just a number.”
“And there are some days when I’d agree with that,” he said. “Other days, not so much. I’m older than I ever thought I’d be. At least that’s how it feels. There’s one age where, when you die, people say, Oh, how sad, he left much too soon. And another age when they say, Well, you know, he had a good run. That’s where I am, the stage where all I have to look forward to is mental decrepitude, adult diapers, and trying not to drool when they pull the plug.”
“Way too much information on the diapers, but I get it. So what else are you worried about?”
He chewed at the inside of his cheek for a second, then said, “Look, Shanelle, I don’t want to bring up the same question I asked everyone back at the river, but you’re still young. You’re smart, funny, attractive—”
“Pretty would’ve been better than attractive.”
“Okay, pretty,” he said, and smiled. “You’re the only woman who ever asked me to dance like she meant it, not like it was something she was expected to do. All the more reason to say maybe you shouldn’t be doing this. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”
“Vaughn, you have no idea how many times someone’s said to me, You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and honestly, it’s a curse. It’s like somebody sends you to prison for life without parole and when you get there the guard says, You should be happy, at your age you could be stuck in this little bitty cage for fifty or sixty years! You’ve got your whole life ahead of you! Thanks, but no thanks.”
I could see he still didn’t get it, so I explained. It was the first time I ever talked about it with anyone who didn’t have me sitting on a couch under a bunch of diplomas.
I told him about getting dumped by Phil, and how I got tired of being dissed, ditched, and depressed, and went into what my therapist called my “wild-girl stage.” I started going to clubs late at night because when it gets near closing time and there’s men who still haven’t hooked up with anyone, it doesn’t matter if you’re too skinny or too fat or too ugly or too anything, there’s gonna be at least one guy there who wants to fuck you. So I went from no sex to getting fucked almost every night. It was hardly ever the same guy twice, but I didn’t care. Every fuck was like a punch in the face to everybody who ever treated me bad or stood me up.
I thought it’d make me feel better to get laid regular, but none of it ever made a difference. I’d come home even more depressed than before. But I kept doing it anyway because what else was I gonna do?
Then one night I went with this one guy to his apartment and I was really drunk and once we were alone he said, “Hit me.” And I was like, what? He said it again. I thought it was weird and kind of silly, but I went ahead and hit him, just kind of easy. “No, harder,” he said.
So I hit him. “Again,” he said. So I did. And then I don’t know what happened, but next thing I know I pulled back and just really hit him hard, like all the anger I had at everybody else who hurt me over the years was coming out all at once, and I just kept going at him and hitting him and now he’s yelling stop but I don’t, I kept hitting him and he’s covering his face and I’m crying and finally I ran out and left him behind.
I spent days being scared that he was going to come after me, or tell the police, or sue me, or blackmail me, or do something to hurt me back. I didn’t go out because I was afraid of running into him, didn’t sleep, I was constantly in the bathroom because my stomach hurt from fear about what he might do or what would happen if my folks found out what I’d been doing.
The more I kept worrying about it and thinking about how I ended up in that situation in the first place and everything I’d been doing, the more disgusted I got and the more I went into a spiral. I hated my life, hated men, hated everybody. I went full-on rage and there was no place to put those feelings and it was tearing me apart and this time nothing helped, not the cutting or the anti-depressants or the drinking, so I was just gonna drive out of this world once and for all, except I didn’t have a car but my folks had two, so after they left for church I went in the garage, closed the door, and turned on the engine. Would’ve worked, too, except they came home early, and when they opened the garage, they found me and pulled me out. I spent the next 72 hours in the hospital under suicide watch, and though I knew by now what to say to get out when the window expired, I was just as firm as ever in my decision that there was nothing left for me in this life, which is why I’m here now. It’s not like I don’t have choices, it’s just that all my choices suck and I’m tired of fighting about it. I want out, that’s all.
It was a lot to process, and he spent a long time looking down at his hands. “We all make mistakes, Shanelle,” he said, like he was talking about me but at the same time more than me, like there was something else behind his words. “We get angry, we lose control, it’s not something we plan and it doesn’t make us bad people, it…”
He ran out of words for a second. Then he looked back up at me. “This man, the one you met, did he ever come after you?”
“No. But a couple of days after I replied to Mark’s ad, I was downtown getting a few things for the trip and I turned around and there he was. I totally froze. He seemed as surprised to see me as I was to see him.
“ ‘I’ve been looking for you!’ he said, and I started to try and defend myself because I was sure he was going to dial 9-1-1, but he just kept on going.
“ ‘What happened that night,’ he said, his eyes all wide and excited, ‘what you did to me… could you do it again? Please?’
“He was a complete freak,” I said, and just laughed.
Even Vaughn smiled. “And that didn’t change your mind about all this?”
“No. What happened was the last step on a road I’d already been on for a long time. I’m done. Besides, there’s a part of me that believes in reincarnation, which makes death the ultimate makeover, so I’m putting in a request to come back as a skinny little Asian girl with a fat bank account and a tiny ass.”
“I understand, maybe more than you think, and I’m sorry you had to endure all that, Shanelle. You’re a beautiful woman and you deserve so much better.”
“Beautiful’s even better than pretty!” I said, and smiled, making the moment small again. I put my hand on his. “You’re a good person, Vaughn. I’m glad we met.”
“Thanks, same here,” he said, and started to take his hand back, but I locked fingers before he could get free. “Mine!” I said, like the seagulls in Finding Nemo. “Mine-mine-mine-mine-mine!”
Got a big old laugh out of him on that one.
And there we sat, holding hands while everyone else finished breakfast, waiting to get back on the road and our journey to the inevitable.
Gonna be the biggest, baddest makeover ever.
* * *
Karen_Ortiz
“I’ve got kind of a problem,” he said, glancing around to make sure nobody could hear us, “and you’re the most sensible person here, so I wanted to get your opinion. The other day I noticed we were having some issues with the onboard server that were slowing down the system and I told Mark I could fix it for him. He texted back, I understand, later, which I thought meant, Okay, just not now, but looking back I think he was saying let’s talk about it later. Anyway, going off what I thought he said, I started poking around the server, clearing caches and dealing with some latency problems when I saw something I wasn’t supposed to see.”
“You didn’t go poking around in our journals, did you?”
“No,” he said, real fast, “no, no, no, no. I could see the file names when I admin’d into the system, but I didn’t go near them. No, this was a folder buried deep inside the cache. I found it when I tried clearing the folders automatically and this one wouldn’t delete. I thought maybe it was corrupted and would have to be deleted manually, so I opened the folder.”
“Okay. So what did you find?”
“Best if you read it yourself, if you’re okay with that, so I can get your opinion about what to do. My gut says I should confront Mark about it, but since I found it while I was doing something I probably shouldn’t have been doing in the first place, I don’t exactly have the high ground, you know?”
“I’m not sure if I’m comfortable looking at something that Mark intended to be private,” I said. “I mean, if the situation was reversed and I found out that Mark had read any of my uploads, I’d feel betrayed.”
“Totally a different situation, and for what it’s worth, he hasn’t done that. There would be an admin record showing time and date of access, but they’re all clean. So he’s been honest about that part. It’s the rest that I need your advice about.”
I told him I’d think about it and let him know later.
I swear, any time you put more than two people together in a small space, there’s always drama.
* * *
LIsa
Given the stolen glances around the table at breakfast, my Spidey sense tells me that Dylan and Karen got together the other night. It even looks like Vaughn and Shanelle are becoming a thing, and who would’ve seen that one coming? Meanwhile, I’m so horny I’m masturbating three times a day, even on the bus when no one’s looking. I know it’s the whole bipolar thing, but godDAMN it’s a bitch some days. And why are there no cool names for masturbation when women do it, but a ton of them for men? Rubbing one out, jerking off, beating the bishop, burping the worm, choking the chicken, wanking, fapping, jacking, knob job… and what do women get? I masturbate three times a day. Cold. Clinical. Oh, sure, there’s Jilling Off, but that’s just a riff on what the guys say, Jack and Jill, but it’s only Jacking Off because that’s the motion, right? Like a jackhammer. The only thing Jill’s known for is falling down a hill, and why the hell am I even going down this rabbit hole in the first place?
Point is, we need a marketing campaign to come up with better terms for when women masturbate. How about finger-dipping, polishing the pearl, riding the pillow, slishing, sloshing, or in my case, I had a typical Saturday night three times today?
When Mark’s ad promised a party, I figured it’d be a nonstop fuckfest between pickup and Delivery Unto Death. And while some parts have been good, and I really like (most of) the people, it’s just not what I thought it would be. But what is, right?
Still, it’s a long way to San Francisco, so we’ll see who comes on next. Better be someone hot, because if this keeps up I’m gonna fracture my wrist.
* * *
AdminMark
Having left early and with almost no traffic on the road, we made it to our next pickup two hours ahead of schedule: Lexington, Nebraska (not Kentucky—why are so many names recycled?), our last stop before the Colorado border. Feels like we’ve been in Nebraska forever, but it’s a big state and a lot’s happened since we crossed in.
With a population of just over 10,000 and an area of less than five miles, Lexington is one of those places tucked way out in the middle of nowhere that used to be about a lot of things that aren’t there anymore. Used to be an old trading post until it burned down. Used to be on the Pony Express line until it went obsolete. Biggest employer used to be a beef-packing company before it got sold to Tyson. But the Museum of Military Vehicles is still there, so that’s good news for the How Many Kinds of Jeeps Can You Name? crowd.
Since there probably aren’t a lot of tour buses going through town, I told D to look for a spot where we could hang without being seen. He found an alley between two auto repair places that had closed for the day. High concrete walls, no sidewalk, no direct line-of-sight from the street… you’d have to know we were there to know we were there.
We were getting low on supplies, so D and Tyler volunteered to check out the local stores to see what they could dredge up. I told the others that they could stretch their legs and walk around as long as they didn’t draw attention, but so far nobody’s taken me up on that. I think everyone’s just tired and looking forward to a change of scenery. Besides, from the town website, the only events going on today are meetings of the Town Council, the City Development Committee, and storyteller time at the library.
Colorado, here we come!
* * *
VaughnR
“So what are you writing?” Lisa asked Theo out of the blue. I think she does it to test people, surprising them with a question that might seem natural if there had been a few sentences lined up in front of it to pave the way, but which come across as in-your-face when dumped into the middle of a perfectly good silence.
“Nothing important,” Theo said, and continued writing.
“Back at the mall you said you were writing about destroying the world,” Peter said. “Isn’t that important?”
I could see Theo’s eyes clicking through a dozen different replies before landing on Okay, fine, we were going to get into this sooner or later and there’s nothing else entertaining going on, so let’s do this.
“Rather than destroying the world, maybe a better way of describing it would be replacing this world with another. For as long as I can remember I’ve daydreamed about a world that I belonged to more than this one. So I started writing stories about it, filling one notebook after another with histories and people and fashion, down to the smallest details, so it would feel as real as this one. I like to pretend that when the story’s done, the lie of this world will fade away, and I can slide into the other one and live there forever.”
“When do you think you’ll be finished?” Shanelle asked.
“At the end of our trip,” Theo said, and we all knew what was meant by that. “I’ll write one last page, close my eyes, and when I open them again, I’ll be in a high tower overlooking the silver city and the most beautiful sunrise in history.”
“Can you read us a little of it?” Karen asked.
“I don’t know,” Theo said, frowning. “It’s pretty rough.”
“Totally fine with that,” Peter said. “Besides, there’s not much else to do until Dylan and Tyler get back.”
Theo hesitated, then flipped pages, looking for one part in particular. “Okay. I’m pretty happy with this section. You’re sure you want to hear it?”
“Of course we are,” Lisa said, “stop stalling.”
Theo smiled, then sat back, took a slow breath, and started reading.
I wish I could repeat it. I’d give my left nut to recapture what that moment felt like, but I don’t have the words, only Theo knows which ones to use and what order to put them in. If I even tried, whatever came out the other side wouldn’t be worth a fraction of what was in those pages: a city in a far-off land where people were polite and friendly, leaders were wise and
just and fair, and there was beauty everywhere, tall towers of stained glass that stretched high into a deep blue sky, great domed buildings covered in gold and marble, libraries that held an infinity of books, and, outside the city walls, deep green forests with trees so old that they just kind of dozed through the centuries. It was all so clear, so real, that I felt I could reach out and it would be there.
As I closed my eyes to better see the place in my mind, a phrase I heard when I was a boy came back to me. The kind of place where a man can live his life full measure.
It took me a moment to realize that Theo had stopped speaking. When I opened my eyes, I saw everyone else had done the same thing. We blinked in the fading daylight as if we were coming back into this place, this moment, these bodies.
At first nobody spoke, still processing it, then Lisa said, “That was—”
And Karen finished it. “—beautiful.”
“Oh, fuck you,” Mark said, and I got my back up until I saw he was grinning as he said it. “I have a degree in writing, I’ve studied writing, I’ve worked to be a writer since I was sixteen, but I’ve never written anything like that. I could sit here for two years and not come up with something that amazing.”
Theo smiled and nodded appreciation for the compliment. “I’m not a writer. I don’t think I could tell proper stories or write books. I just started writing my way out of this world because I couldn’t see any other way to do it.”
Then Mark’s phone pinged with a notification and all hell broke loose.
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