If the Floridian publicist had exaggerated the splendour of the gathering, she’d been accurate about the enormity. Wandering through aisles of beeswax-scented booths Marta emoted erratically, astounded by the complex interplay of hope and despair. Crystals, herbs, oils, cards, texts, dolls, rune-inscribed stones, Psychic Answers 100% Guaranteed, zodiac forecasts, each a curative proffered before a staggering—and apparently endless—litany of woe: heartache, addiction, cancer, depression, curses, bad luck, and worse karma. Stretched out table after table, Marta saw, lay evidence of the human condition. Sadie Lightbody will not be joining the fray, Marta had thought. No contrarian voice piped up to debate.
7.
“You know, I was thinking it over and I dunno.” Chaz reached over to nudge Marta’s shoulder. “Hello, you there? Marta?”
“Reverie.” Marta refocussed, unsure whether she’d fallen asleep. “Sorry. But I have mentioned that I am not really accustomed to fourteen hour shifts, yes? You were saying?”
“Never mind, it was no big deal.”
The rushing air sent pocket currents of pine and coolness through the cabin. They had traveled in silence on an empty road for long minutes when Chaz said, “Crap.” He pumped the brake pedal and made a sudden turn right. “Man, almost missed it. Again.” The lights shone on a gate. Behind it, a two-track roadway sliced into dry grass fields. “Just a sec.” He pushed open the door. “Things look so different in the dark.”
Insects flew into the beams cast by the headlights. Marta watched a dust cloud settle as Chaz untethered the gate and returned to the cab.
“Hold on, it’s bumpy from here on in. Do you want to drive down the hill or hike it?
“Let’s hike.” Marta would have chosen the other option if Chaz had slowed to a reasonable pace.
“Deal.” He braked and shifted into Park.
Marta searched outside for lights. “There’s no one here.” The headlights illuminated the road’s compressed dirt tracks and another periphery of dry grass. “I guess that’s not really necessary.”
“There should be. ‘Budgetary considerations,’ maybe.” He swung open the door and stepped outside. “Safer here too. It’d be a different story if we’d pulled up in the city.”
“Will that drain the battery,” Marta asked. She listened for crickets and heard only the cooling engine’s pinging.
“It’ll be fine. Otherwise we’ll be stumbling around in pitch black. And that’s an accident waiting to happen.”
“Coyotes could be prowling.”
“Another reason to keep the lights on. Let’s get a move on.”
Surefooted, Chaz strode ahead and followed the fading path of light generated by the rental. The beams vanished as they descended; Chaz brought out a metal flashlight. After a Boy Scout salute, he said, “Be prepared.”
Still walking at a dedicated pace Chaz stretched a hand back; Marta accepted the assistance and clutched his thick wrist.
“Oh,” Marta said, tread unsteady on the soft loose ground, “I couldn’t see this from the road.” She noticed the partial echo of their footfall as well as of her own voice. In the weak light the pit lost definition; Marta imagined them as nocturnal explorers surveying the strange barren vastness of the Barrington Crater. The blackness of eternal night encompassed me, she thought, remembering, though never admiring, Poe’s peculiar brand of gothic melodrama.
Watchful of eroding gravel edges, Marta soon breathed regularly, suffused with relief when the road flattened out; cracking an ankle at the bottom of a dark pit was no one’s idea of fun. She relaxed her grasp on Chaz, who slowly circled like a lighthouse beacon and cast rays toward the pit’s far reaches. The revelations wavered spectrally: at medium distance rocky piles and conveyor-belted machinery that decades back had carried industrial goods from A to B. Senses alert though hardly superhuman, Marta found the scene—derelict equipment, blurry weeds, argentine flashes of darting animal eyes (rabbit, owl, groundhog?), awesome shroud of sky, and resounding silence—eerie, even otherworldly, and not frightening.
Situated at the base of a cliff, the partial spacecraft commanded attention. Marta raised her brows, impressed by the effect created by the flashlight’s beam on the low-luster surface, the tent-fabric skin like a stretched latex glove swabbed with creosote; the jutting mechanisms registered as foreboding and potent, just as evil should be.
Chaz tossed the flashlight underhand toward Marta. “Crap, sorry about that. Take a look, I’ll wait here.”
Marta retrieved the flashlight from the basin’s floor of gravel crumbs and wiped it clean on the denim. She aimed the light toward the craft and traced a path toward her feet: the way was free of impediments. Camera-ready and crew-proof, she supposed.
She looked back at Chaz, whose hand now cupped his mouth. The man’s smoking didn’t surprise her. Donuts, candies, cigarettes, coffee: a sybarite as far as a future gastroenterologist would be concerned, she surmised, only half-serious. Or a case of maladaptive oral fixation. An object always hovered near Chaz’s fun-loving mouth. Like the zodiac Freud had his uses, Marta had found, especially when applied to others. Herself, she’d been labeled as anal retentive at least a few times, though she preferred a pathology-free descriptor like well-organized.
Pitched at seventy-five degrees and circled by the debris of heaped earth, the wreck looked convincingly disabled. Marta stood close to the surface and inspected the details.
“There’s a miniature or two for close-ups in studio,” Chaz yelled. “This one would look like Plan 9 crap under the microscope.”
Marta walked to the ship’s edge and shone the light upwards. Behind: ground strewn with lumber, cables, and PVC piping; the complex wooden skeleton provided no hint of the aerodynamic sleekness of the opposite side.
“You okay back there?” Chaz called out. “It’s pretty lonely over here.”
Marta returned to front of stage. “Don’t move, there’s a coyote on the hill just over your shoulder.”
“Very funny.” He squatted to stub out the cigarette as she stepped closer. Marta caught a cloying scent, not uncommon on campus and city streets.
“Will you be okay to drive?” Marijuana caused only drooping lids and dumb hunger when she’d tried a brownie years before. Marta tossed the flashlight to test his reflexes.
He caught it without effort. “Of course, I’m a pro.”
Famous last words, she thought, even as she opted to trust his self-evaluation, a hedged leap of faith. Marta stopped and craned her neck. From the bottom of the pit—crickets, crunching gravel, and breathing the only sounds—low meandering clouds obscured starlight. “Cool, eh. With that black halo it reminds me of what macular degeneration must feel like.” Chaz flicked off the flashlight.
“You’re quite the romantic.” The scraped gravel floor and complete blackness reminded Marta of a rehearsal in an empty threatre. “I can picture you with Wordsworth in that long belt of flowers. He’d be waxing lyrically about dancing with daffodils, and you’d say they looked like fried eggs or tiny suns going supernova.” When Chaz didn’t reply, she sought his expression in the shadows. Nothing. Attempts at banter warped in her mouth and burst out as scoffing, like Lady Sneerwell’s malice except not safely distant on stage.
Recent sentences loitering menacingly in the air, Marta wondered about apologetic phrases. “Sorry about that” had the merit of elegant simplicity, though it ran toward patness. And if “My tongue acts on its own when I’m nervous, sorry” sounded less mechanical, she had to wonder about its truth.
The beam reappeared and illuminated the gravel. “Okay, I guess we should get a move on,” Chaz said, “busy day tomorrow.” He directed the light to the road’s incline and gestured for Marta to lead.
Enveloped by blanketing night and the fragrance of summer grasses, Marta resisted the urge to speak.
Chaz walked a few steps behind, guiding the way.
As they approached the crest he caught up and rested an open hand on her shoulder, swerving to pull her close. The bolt of alarm passing through Marta dispersed as quickly, her realization coinciding with Chaz’s stumbling over a stone and pressing his lips inches shy of their target.
“Ah.” Nearly dumbstruck and confused about the details of the situation they’d fallen into, she tamped down thoughts of crafty Greeks embracing the hope of a winning military strategy.
“Christ, was that smooth or what?” Like a storyteller preparing to scare a campfire audience, Chaz placed the flashlight beneath his chin. He touched Marta’s jaw. “At least I didn’t draw blood.”
“Or chip a tooth.” Marta smiled and watched Chaz swing the beam toward the car. “Thanks.” The simple word covered sincerity and an apology for earlier abrasiveness. “The guided UFO tour under the cover of night couldn’t have been better.”
“Great, ma’am, it’s the little things that make this job so special,” He tipped an imaginary hat. “Gratuities help too.”
In the distance the lantern glow of twin headlights grew steadily into a scalding halogen glare.
“The cavalry’s arrived,” Chaz said. “Still kinda weird that no one was posted here.”
“Mystery of the Missing Guard solved.”
“I read all the Hardy Boys.”
“Me too.” Nancy Drew as well, but that news would hardly come as a surprise.
“I’d better go wave the white flag, let the PA know we’re the good guys. Wait here, okay?”
“By all means.” Cowboy paternalism, she thought, how cute.
AFTER HOURS
1.
Sequestered and untouchable in the shadowy back office—no ringing phones, no hasty meetings, no professional rulings to make, and no Lora, who should by now be settled into REM sleep—Jake scrolled through online postings. Hope springs eternal, he thought, free hand tucked between thighs. Especially when fueled by festering hormones. He reconsidered. Volcanic hormones had a better ring to it.
His tongue snaked as Jake read, sliding into pliant hollows before returning to the precise location high on the mucous wall of his left cheek where yet another pearly canker sore had hunkered down. Aphthous ulcers, his grizzled doctor called them, and after he’d explained that Jake did not suffer from Sutton’s Disease as Jake’s dedicated internet searches had lead him to conclude—yes, cankers were a familiar growth in the fertile greenhouse of his mouth but, no, they weren’t chronic, not technically—he’d also said with a tone of undisguised exasperation that virtually anything, from citrus juice and spicy foods to stress and abrasions, caused the painful little incidents, and that if they ran in the family, well, you’re prone to them and they’ll be a tiny thorn in your side for life, boo hoo.
Muttering intolerant words about the trifling infirmities of each post-war generation, the doctor advised rinsing with salt water and taking B12 if absolutely necessary. Don’t be such a baby hung in the man’s office air like spores.
Jake’s tongue roved on, but the agent of obscure retribution returned to the white ulcerous jelly to jab the pain-trigger surface. Proneness to anything evoked picking-up-soap Oz scenarios and hapless flipped crabs circled by gulls, and Jake wanted nothing to do with that; he’d take predator over prey any day. He decided to head to the kitchen for salt after checking out the next few postings. Annihilate the squatter.
He switched between sites, each one facilitating social networking—ha, what a term, so chaste—of a kind, and clicked on tantalizing city postings as well as graspable local ones, surprised at the global village similarity. The city contained a steadier volume, of course, but the sheer variety of tastes and extremities of kinks seemed reliably common.
Locals ads weren’t plentiful tonight, and of those few the bulk raised alarms—either bizarre (“Selling used bras . . . dont ask a million questions. They my exs bras left over, misc sizes, have 30 or 40 bras. Take them all $40.00”) or illiterate (“I have grate stemina, I’m good looker, and decease free”), or both. And, as always, the holier-than-thou finger pointer patrolled the border:
A Word to the Wise – w4m - (Everywhere)
I see so many men on here saying they get no responses from women - only gay men. I have two words to say on that: Dick Pics. Now I’d like to say that I am a 100% completely heterosexual woman, but I am completely turned off by pictures of your penis in:
a) various states of hardness
b) various states of softness
c) posed next to a water bottle to display length
d) posed next to a beer can to display girth
e) posed with your hairy balls and/or hairy ass
All I have to say about dick pics is gross, gross gross gross and gross.
If you are truly interested in getting a response from a woman as opposed to a gay man, then display a tasteful body pic. The rest can be seen at a later date. Have discussed this with many of my female friends and we are all in agreement on this. So, if you want a chick then don’t post your dick.
Jake thought of responding to Miss Unsolicited Advice with a photo of his erection planted next to a bottle of shaving cream—or a Heineken bottle: his photo collection was sizable—and one letter: “f.”
As with Exconfessio, anonymity here encouraged free expression of belief. The site appeared democratic, wonderfully so in theory, but as with any town hall free-for-all or a gathering of drunks lack of inhibition repeatedly forced everyone to face the concrete fact of heaping opinions they disagreed with or didn’t care to hear in the first place. He’d say the site’s blunt racism set civil rights back by a century.
Jake didn’t reply. An internet flamewar would just waste time. There’s bigger fish to fry, he thought.
Jake checked sites routinely, a moderately bad habit he told himself, and not an addiction—even if you granted the possibility of such a thing. Sure, the ads entertained—as sideshow oddities, porn, and Jerry Springer trash-talk all rolled together, and consequently as a reprieve, akin to a coffee break or recess—but spectacle alone would not sustain interest for long.
If asked, Jake would define himself as a doer, not a voyeur. He’d sought out low-wattage venues on several continents where viewing heaving entangled bodies was as customary as white lies; and while he’d stand nearby until dilated pupils picked out the details, soon enough he’d wander off in search of quieter corners. Groups got on his nerves: too many signals to interpret, unpredictable complications, and one bad apple spoiled the barrel. Sex—one tab in one slot, his usual choice—raced ahead as the real draw, not laborious community-building, UN negotiations, or Cirque acrobatics. What else? Just looking? Why only watch when you can act? Action always trumped spectatorship, the one infinitely superior to the other.
He returned to a local prospect, which struck him as worthwhile enough despite glaring shortcomings. From the headline alone—“I’m drunk and right now I’m so in love with you - W4M - 32 (Close to Vaseux Lake)”—he could tell Sherlock Holmes didn’t need to point out the trouble brooding. And the ad’s content hammered down any clinging uncertainty:
I just got home from a disappointing [arty and I am WASTED. looking to be impaled. just took some Gravol and waiting for it to kick it. bang me and leave kinda deal. Tall, drak, hansome, get ahole of me asap.
The woman, accepting the ad’s truth, was plainly a three-car pileup of a wreck. Unsuccessful at love, and so accepting the bare minimum from a stranger instead. Not to mention wasted and on Gravol—he checked Wikipedia about side effects: dizziness, unusual bleeding or bruising, drowsiness, constipation. She’d be fever-hot, oozing musk and boozy sweat.
Okay, it can’t hurt to check in, Jake thought, recognizing recklessness, and sent a standard line of statistics followed by a tentative statement of interest: “Hi, gdlkg, 6feet, 185, hairy chest, hefty endowment (see attached pic), discrete and after late-nigh
t impaling fun.”
He conjured the image of slick, sweat-streaming, and feral Christina Aguilera in that boxing ring video and levitated her to a lakeside rural Canadian trailer park where, still drunk and feisty, she’d crash-landed on a narrow cot, short plaid kilt flipped up and showing a taut tanned bare ass and dimpled cleft, a locale of unresisting promise; above the waistband peeked a tattooed inspirational saying, a winding thread of reading material for quick-draw guests.
Jake factored out the gruesome possibility of Gravol and multiple respondents: a dizzy and bruised Xtina doppelgänger suffering from cramps and constipation defined anti-aphrodisiac, as did idiotic small talk in a room full of ill-at-ease guys jockeying for the lead fuck.
The fantasy continued to resist his designs. Jake pushed away another figure—mobile home Xtina’s sad emaciated city cousin, a rickety crack whore wearing a platinum wig that he’d once caught alley-servicing a lard-assed salesman in a boxy suit (hefty briefcase of sample wares tucked under his arm) at 6:30 in the morning near the set of a failed 16-episode superhero series—that kept shoving her way into the scenario. The logical mind’s reminders about likelihood rarely bothered with subtlety.
Stalled about committing, Jake walked toward the kitchen; the blue, green, and red glow of stand-by lights on faxes, printers, phones, computers, Lora’s air purifier, the kettle, and coffee maker provided sci-fi illumination. He dumped a handful of salt in a glass and added hot water; swishing the briny medication he clamped his throat, trying to avoid swallowing a drop. A body refuses the intake of that concentration of salt and he’d be happy to make it through the day without heaving up a meal.
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