by Jeff Garvin
“Who the hell is this?” There was a rustling of plastic and the sound of openmouthed chewing.
“Hi, Mr. Higgins,” I said, trying to sound casual. “My name is—”
“How did you get this number?”
“I, um . . .” I decided on impulse that the truth would be best. “I used an investigator.”
He barked with laughter. “All right, well, now I have to get a new number. Kindly piss off.”
“Wait! Mr. Higgins, I have an offer for you.”
More rustling of plastic, then: “What do you have?”
“Actually, it’s something you have.”
Higgins made a hacking sound as if something had gone down the wrong pipe. “I don’t sell. I’m a collector. I collect.”
“I’m not looking to buy.”
“What are you, a movie person? Try Cineprops on Maryland Parkway. I don’t work with movie people.”
“It’s the truck.”
Higgins paused. “What truck?”
“The 1947 Chevrolet. Cape Maroon. You acquired it after its final appearance on Late Night with Craig Rogan.”
He was silent; I had his attention.
“I need to borrow it. And the Plexiglas tank.”
He laughed. “You’re funny. Who did you say this was?”
I hesitated. The truth might elicit questions I didn’t want to answer. But he would find out sooner or later.
“My name is Elias Dante Jr.”
“Dante.” Another pause. “Oh. I get it. Looking to buy up Daddy’s legacy before the old man kicks it and drives up the price?”
Wow. He really was an asshole.
“I don’t want to buy them; I just . . .” I took a deep breath. “What if I told you the Uncanny Dante was going to do that trick again on live TV in nine days?”
“I’d say you’re full of shit.” Chewing noises.
“What if I could prove it?”
Slurping through a straw. “I guess I’d set my DVR.”
I closed my eyes and clutched the phone tight in my hand.
“Mr. Higgins, I know you must get strange opportunities all the time. But the one I’m about to present will double the value of your property. Maybe triple it.”
There was a long silence. And then Higgins said, “I’m listening.”
CHAPTER 11
I WOKE TO UNWELCOME SUNLIGHT on my face. The tang of diesel. A heaviness in my chest.
I rolled over on my vibrating bed and reached for my phone. It was almost one p.m.; we’d been on the road a day and a half since leaving Mishawaka. A day and a half, and not a single message from Liam. He’d sent the most recent one the morning after we’d made out on that railroad tie:
Last night was better than great.
He’d used my own words, and that had made me feel light, somehow, as if my heart were impervious to gravity. Now it was a bowling ball. I was an idiot to think he’d actually wanted to see me when I got to California. He had felt sorry for me, that was all—but it had worn off, and he had moved on.
I sat up. My head felt full of cotton, my legs lead. I crawled out of bed and looked out the window: barren farmland rushed past, punctuated by rotting barns and corroding aluminum lean-tos. Google Maps put us just outside Elk City, Oklahoma. Dad had stopped for diesel twice since leaving Indiana, which meant our bankroll was almost gone. We were bound for Las Vegas, but we would run out of gas long before we got there.
We had no money, no props, and Higgins’s price was impossible.
When he’d finally understood that I really did want to borrow Dad’s old props, he had begrudgingly agreed to rent them to us—for the outrageous price of five thousand dollars. I accepted—what choice did I have? But now I was back where I’d started: five grand short.
I stumbled to the bathroom, stopped up the sink, and filled it with water. I plunged my face under the surface and counted until my lungs began to burn.
When I emerged a few minutes later, I could hear Dad whistling something old and jazzy. It was piercing to my ears.
“There she is,” he called from the driver’s seat. “I’ve got coffee up here.” He resumed whistling.
I made my way to the passenger seat, dropped into it, and took a sip of tepid coffee. My neurons twitched and slowly came to life.
“You were out for fourteen hours.” He looked over at me with that Concerned Father expression. “Are you all right?”
I got the feeling Dad had been mostly blind to my mother’s mood swings, just as he seemed mostly blind to mine. Even when he managed to detect that something was wrong, he handled me clumsily. Are you all right? he asked, as if my mental health had a check-engine light. Are you all right? asked in a hopeful tone, putting the impetus on me to reassure him.
“I’m fine.” My voice was worn gravel.
I had heard that other parents lamented their teenagers’ defiance. My defiance was a relief to Dad. It excused him from having to worry.
He nodded half-heartedly, accepting my response without appearing to believe it. He was subdued for a moment, maybe out of respect for my dark mood, but after a few minutes he started whistling again. I considered dumping my hot coffee into his lap. That would shut him up. I noticed he was bouncing his knee and realized: he was giddy, probably at the thought of returning to Las Vegas for a two-night engagement. An engagement, I reminded myself, that didn’t exist. There was a real gig coming, of course—but between here and there were five thousand dollars, twelve hundred miles, and one big lie.
I checked my phone; no notifications. Not from Liam, not even from Ripley. I thought of the sink full of water. I fished a pair of gas-station sunglasses from the glove compartment, put them on, and closed my eyes.
We pulled into the Amarillo KOA an hour before dusk, gravel crunching under the tires. There was a cluster of faux log cabins, a sandbox for kids, a pond that would’ve been infested with mosquitoes a month prior. I checked in at the lodge and paid for one night in cash. Got the Wi-Fi password and a key to the restrooms.
I stood in the shower in my faded flip-flops, watching the water circle the mildewed drain. Thirty seconds in, the hot water ran out and ice-cold pins and needles rained down on me. We had run out of shampoo, so I was using a bar of Irish Spring I’d found in the stall—but my hair was too greasy from the baby oil. I needed real shampoo. I needed hot water. I needed a shower that didn’t require shoes.
The soap slipped from my hand and landed on the filthy tile with a clack. I bent over to retrieve it, only to see that it had collected a nest of black hair. I gagged, stood up, covered my mouth. It was disgusting, living like this. I couldn’t take it.
I couldn’t take it.
My shoulders began to tremble, and I stuffed my washcloth in my mouth to muffle the oncoming sobs. I leaned against the stall door to brace myself for the fit, but it didn’t come. Instead, I had only a shallow, ragged cry; the kind that brought no relief and only mattered because it couldn’t be contained. When it had passed, I rinsed my face in the spray and turned off the water. I walked back to the RV, heavy and hollow and raw.
Dad closed his journal and looked up. “Ellie?”
Ella, ella, eh, eh, eh . . .
“You look awful. What’s the matter, really?”
Are you all right?
“I’m just tired.” My voice sounded flat.
“But you slept all day.”
“Teenagers need more sleep. It’s a medical fact.” I had tried to add some inflection, but it came out sounding dull.
“I don’t buy it,” Dad said. “And I’m concerned. You’re still taking your medication, aren’t you?”
Wow, I wanted to say. Do you really not know? Or are you just in denial? I supposed it didn’t matter. Either way, there was nothing he could do about it.
“Nope,” I said, giving him a flat look. “The doves looked manic. I’ve been feeding it to them.”
His frown wilted, and now he looked confused. A lost, sad old man. “I’m only trying to help.
Please, tell me what’s really bothering you.”
“Really?” I said, raising my eyebrows. “What’s really bothering me?” I held up my threadbare towel. “I just took a cold shower in a filthy stall with a bar of soap I found on the floor.”
Dad opened his mouth, but I cut him off with a gesture toward the accordion door.
“The only privacy I get is a plastic screen.” My voice was rising, thinning out like a high note through a reed. “I’m flunking school because I only get internet every third day, and I haven’t bought new clothes since I was fifteen. Oh, and I live in a FUCKING RV!”
Dad bolted to his feet. “Watch your tongue, young lady.” His voice was acid. “I’m sorry you weren’t born to a family of accountants with a trust fund. But in this family, we are artists. And artists don’t always have the luxury of—”
“Artists?” I said, barely containing a laugh. “You think we’re artists? We make more money robbing gas stations than we do performing ‘art.’”
Dad’s face blanched.
I should have stopped. Apologized. I should have told him the truth, that I was out and low and standing on the edge.
Instead, I goaded him.
“What are you going to do now, send me to my room?” I gestured again at the flimsy partition. “Don’t bother. I’m already going.”
I took two short, exaggerated steps and slammed the plastic door with a weak click.
Dad made no further effort to talk to me that night; he must have been truly furious. Around eleven, I slid open the door to find him asleep on his couch. I tried to sleep, too, but my mind was still spinning from the fight, replaying every terrible thing I had said. We had never fought like that before—not ever—and a low, heavy dread settled on my heart. He’d been trying to help, and I had not only pushed him away, I had hurt him, deeply. I’d made him feel like a failure as a parent, and then I’d struck the death blow, belittling the thing he cared about most: being a magician. It was all he had left. What if he never forgave me? My eyes ached. My limbs were leaden. I felt like downed power lines.
I rolled over, opened my bedside drawer, and stared at the empty orange cylinder inside. I had taken my last pill four days ago—how long before the drug was completely out of my system? I retrieved my phone from the floor and Googled it. WebMD said three to five days.
Maybe that’s why everything seemed so impossible.
With Dad snoring on the couch, I slipped outside and walked across the gravel lot to the picnic area. It wasn’t as cold here as it had been in northern Indiana, and I lay down on one of the tables to stare up at the low charcoal clouds. A warm Texas breeze picked up, and for a moment, it was like being back in Las Vegas.
Mom had loved the desert. Sometimes in the summer she would wake me up and take me for a midnight drive. After buying two cups of hot cocoa from the 7-Eleven, she would head west on Flamingo, past the Strip, and into the darkness. We would pull off the road and lie side by side in the bed of her old Toyota pickup, staring up at the stars. She would point out constellations: Ursa Major, Cassiopeia, Orion. Usually, I fell asleep.
I don’t think she ever did.
I sat up suddenly, blood rushing to my head. Those little drives—our “insomniac adventures,” she had called them—must have happened when she was manic. Why had it taken me so long to realize? I lay back down, searching the sky for Orion, but all I saw were clouds.
If her mania was responsible for all those good times, did it make them less real? Less special? If I dismissed all the valleys as flukes of neurochemistry, didn’t that make the peaks just as meaningless?
Mom would have known the answer. She had known all the answers, until she threw them away. I twisted a lock of hair in my fist and pulled until my eyes stung. No crying, she would’ve said. Beauty hurts. Might as well get used to it. I’d always thought she was talking about brushing hair, wearing tight clothes and uncomfortable shoes—all the inconveniences you had to bear and the sacrifices you had to make when you were a girl in the world of performing. But lying there, staring up at the west Texas sky, inhaling the warm breeze, I thought I knew better now. I felt connected to her words somehow, a thousand miles away and ten years dead. Beauty did hurt. Just noticing how things were, experiencing them fully, was painful for people like her and me, and probably always would be.
My phone buzzed. Probably it was just Ripley wanting to chat, and I didn’t feel like talking. It buzzed again, and I reluctantly pulled it from my pocket. My heart seized. It was a text from Liam.
Really sorry. Crazy couple of days. Will try to call tomorrow.
Dumbstruck, I stared at the glowing screen. What the fuck. Crazy couple of days? What did that even mean? Will try to call?
I clutched the phone to my chest and squeezed my eyes shut. I was an idiot. If Liam were really interested in me, he would have texted before now. I should have trusted my instincts. All that flattery, all that making me feel special—it had been nothing more than misdirection. A lie that was more satisfying than the truth.
And what did it matter? What did Liam matter, after what had just happened with Dad?
All at once, loneliness descended on me like a shroud. I started to type out a reply but deleted it. Composed another, and deleted that, too. I felt my mind slowing down, my thoughts beginning to corkscrew. I turned my head to look at the man-made pond. The water was black, and I couldn’t see the bottom. How deep was it? A foot? Eighteen inches? Deeper than a sink, anyway. Deep enough.
I closed my eyes and imagined how it would feel as the surface crept over my lips, my nose, my eyes, sealing me off from the air above. I had held my head under the surface a hundred times but never had the courage to inhale. Would it burn when the cold water hit my lungs? Would I let it take me, or would I cough and sputter and fight to survive?
My doctor in Indianapolis had given a name to this particular loop of thought. He called it suicidal ideation, and I was supposed to consider it an alarm bell. I was supposed to reach out. Only I didn’t feel like reaching out. I wasn’t even sure I had the energy to type the pass code into my shitty phone and place a call. I felt myself tipping downward, as if I’d reached a steep slope and tapped the brakes, only to find they didn’t work.
I rolled over, got to my feet, and walked toward the pond. I had the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline in my contacts, but I had never used it. I told myself that if I did, I would be one step closer. I’d be a statistic.
I took another step toward the edge of the water and held out my phone, daring myself to drop it in, to sever my connection with the outside world.
Then I pulled it back, unlocked the screen, and called Ripley.
It rang four times and went to voice mail. I smacked the phone against my forehead.
It was midnight. He hadn’t answered. I was alone. The water drew my eyes again—and the phone rang in my hand.
“Ellie? Are you all right?”
I managed only a croaking whisper. “No.”
“Okay. I’m here. Hold on.”
I heard the scrape of his window opening and a faint chorus of crickets.
“I’m back,” he said. “Talk to me.”
I could hear how toneless my voice was as I told him about my fight with Dad and Liam’s withdrawal. I felt the pain, but it was dull and distant. I didn’t feel sad, just tired.
Ripley had experienced many parental blowouts and assured me the thing with my dad would work itself out. But then he fell silent. After a long pause, he said, “I’m not sure it’s fair to blame Liam for backing off.”
I gaped. “Wait, you’re siding with him?”
“No. Of course I’m on your side. I’m always on your side. And if you want me to hate this guy, I will hate him with all the fury in my soul. But think about how this went down. You wouldn’t give him your phone number, but he called you anyway. And when you left Fort Wayne, you refused to tell him where you were going—but he drove across the state to show up at your gig. Then he basically asked you
to be his girlfriend, and you were sort of well, okay about it. I’m not saying I know anything about relationships, but it seems like you kind of set the tone here.”
My jaw tightened; he was right. I had sent Liam a barrage of mixed signals, advances and retreats. Of course he’d backed off. I’d been acting like the crazy person I so desperately wanted not to be.
I couldn’t think of what to say to Ripley, couldn’t separate the tangled strands of thought in my head. I closed my eyes and grasped one single thread, one thought that explained everything.
“I’m out of meds.”
“Oh, no,” Ripley said. “Shit, Ellie. I didn’t . . . Don’t listen to me. I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
I should have reassured him, let him off the hook, but I couldn’t.
“I take everything back. He’s a douche canoe, Ellie. A leaky, sinking douche canoe.”
“He’s not a douche canoe.” I spoke in a monotone.
“An ass raft, then.”
This time, a flat laugh escaped me. “Okay. He’s an ass raft.”
Ripley let out a dramatic sigh. “Thank God. I wanted to stay on theme, but I was running out of boat-related insults.”
I laughed again, and this time I sounded more human. I sat down, not caring that the moist earth was soaking into my jeans. The clouds must have parted, because now the moonlight made the surface of the pond look like a silver blanket spread out among the weeds.
“I’m not going to vomit advice on you, okay? I mean, you definitely shouldn’t search guided meditation on YouTube or treat yourself to a candy bar or walk in the sun. Do none of those things.”
I managed to smile.
“Wallow, Ellie. Wallow and sulk like a Morrissey fan at a steakhouse.”
I expected to laugh again, but it came out choked. “Thanks, Ripley.”
“I’m kidding, you know. You should do all those things. And you should tell your dad, and get back on your meds ASAP.”
“I know,” I said, knowing I would do none of it.
“If you get caught in one of your spirals—promise you’ll call me.”
Half-heartedly, I promised. But my mind had already moved on.