by Mary Miller
“People take my picture all the time,” I say. “Every time I go through a toll road my picture gets taken.”
“Not really the same thing. And when are you going through toll roads?”
“Are you sure he doesn’t want you to do anything else?”
“No, just the picture.”
“Your child support’s late,” I say, though we don’t talk about his children, who live in Virginia (a state he is not allowed to enter for reasons that remain unclear). I can just assume he hasn’t paid it. He has no bank account. When someone writes him a check, I have to cash it for him because he lost his ID, sunk to the bottom of the lake along with the boat.
“You think I should do it?” he says. “I can’t believe you think I should do it.”
“For two thousand.”
“Are you serious?”
“You’d do it if I wasn’t here.”
“No I wouldn’t.”
“Then why didn’t you tell him no right off?”
“Because he’s my friend—I was going to think about it first. I owe him that much.”
“Well call him back and tell him you’ll do it. And I get to come.”
“No, babe. I’m not involving you in that kind of stuff.”
“I’m coming,” I say, “and that’s final.” He seems pleased and I wonder if this is what he wanted all along, if I’m stupid. We stay together, I tell myself, because the sex is so good; if the sex weren’t so good, I would have broken this cycle a long time ago.
He calls the guy back and makes affirmative-sounding noises while I watch him pace. So many of my boyfriends have been pacers—it must make them feel important. He says fifteen and gestures for a pen. I hand him one and he scrawls an upside-down address on my magazine, a phone number and the name Susan Lacey. I went to school with some identical twins named Lacey. They were of average intelligence and attractiveness so no one seemed to know what to do with them.
I gather my stuff and climb the two steps into the trailer. I’m still not used to the dimensions—the narrowness of the doors, how small everything is. There are booby traps everywhere, sharp edges that need to be filed down, cabinets that fall open when you walk by. Only in the bed do I feel my normal size.
I open the closet and a light comes on; it is his favorite feature. I shove my clothes back into my overnight bag, my toothbrush and toothpaste and foaming facial cleanser. We’ll have to go by my apartment to get my camera because he doesn’t have one. I wish he had his own damn camera and find myself getting angry about all of the things he doesn’t have and how he assumes I will provide them. I sit on the bed with its ugly pilled comforter that probably came with the trailer and look at my arms, the finger-shaped bruises. I’m going to be involved in a murder, I think. There is no voice that tells me to stop, that says what I am doing is wrong. I can’t remember if there ever was a voice. I don’t remember a voice.
. . .
I refuse to let him take my car so we clean out the truck he uses for work, which belongs to his boss. There’s a situation with a headlight that is an illegal blue color; the cops have already pulled him over twice and told him to get it fixed. We pour two beers into giant McDonald’s cups and he rolls a joint for the road, all of which is worrisome but I tell myself we’re embarking upon a great adventure.
I settle myself into the passenger seat, kick trash around the floorboard.
We pass a group of men near the entrance and he rolls down his window. They are born-again bikers, men with lots of tattoos and angry faces, but they don’t drink or do drugs or get into fights; they show up at trials to support children who have been abused, stand in the back of the courtroom with their arms crossed. They’re biker angels, he tells me, making fun of them, but I think it’s what they call themselves.
At my apartment, he waits in the truck while I walk the three flights upstairs. I get my camera and a pair of shorts and a bikini; the bottoms can double as panties. I wander the rooms wondering what else I might need, if I should just lock the door, put on my pajamas and get in bed. It looks so comfortable, the sheets newly changed, sage green—such a pleasant color. I grab a bottle of water and a couple of Luna bars and then we’re on the highway, headed south. I haven’t been to Biloxi since I broke up with Richard. I have so many old boyfriends now, spread out all over, and so many things remind me of them. I’ll pass a Wendy’s and remember the one who would only eat plain hamburgers. There we are, sitting under the yellow lights with our trays in front of us as I eat one french fry at a time. Nearly every movie, every song and TV show and item of food reminds me of someone and it is a horrible way to live.
I flip down the visor to look at myself. My hair’s in a ratty ponytail and I don’t have any makeup on and I’m too old to be going around barefaced, my mother says. I wish I’d showered before we left his trailer but it’s so small the water runs everywhere and I can’t turn around without the curtain touching my arms or legs, the same curtain that touched the arms and legs of a stranger.
“I brought my swimsuit in case there’s a pool at our hotel.” He puts a hand on my knee. “I need a new one—this one’s from three summers ago and it’s all worn on the butt.”
“I’ll get you a new one,” he says. “I’ll get you a white bikini so I can see your nipples.” The word bikini doesn’t sound right in his mouth. And he hardly ever buys me anything, though it’s always his pot we smoke and I’ve never once bought condoms. Condoms are expensive, he tells me, especially the way we go through them. He has never suggested we don’t use them, though, which is nice of him.
“Do you want me to drive?” I ask.
“I’m fine.”
“I haven’t had as much to drink.”
“I’m fine,” he says again.
“Did the guy say what he wanted the pictures for?”
“We know why he wants them.”
“I know but did he say it?”
“No.”
“ ’Cause that’s not how it works.”
“Right,” he says. He turns the radio up. We both like country music. We also like rap. No one knows where I am. When I’m with him, I don’t return my friends’ text messages or answer my mother’s phone calls. I fall down a rabbit hole.
It’s not a bad drive down 49. There are plenty of places to stop, which I appreciate, and lots of antique malls made out of connecting storage units. My mother used to make me go to them with her back when I was too young to refuse, but I don’t remember her ever buying anything. I wonder what she was looking for. There’s a catfish house shaped like an igloo and another one in a massive barn, only about five miles apart. I like the men on the side of the highway selling fruits and vegetables, nice-looking men in overalls, real country people. We live in Mississippi and almost everyone we know is from Mississippi but we don’t know any real country people.
“I have to pee,” I say, “just stop wherever, whenever it’s convenient.” He tells me I pee too much, and it’s true, I do pee a lot. I close my eyes and think about the woman, Susan Lacey. I imagine her in a shapeless housedress and heavy shoes with rubber soles like a nurse, spooning fro-yo from a gallon container. And then I imagine a younger Susan Lacey, her hair long and dark, eyes full of life. She’s on the street, carrying a recyclable bag full of organic fruits and vegetables, flowers sticking out of the top of it. The picture will capture her mid-stride, head turning to look for cars as she crosses the street. It’s a picture I’ve seen so many times on the crime shows I watch, the photograph snapping the color out of everything.
“Can I smoke?” I ask.
“I don’t care.”
“No, the joint.”
“Let’s wait till after,” he says.
I say okay but after feels like forever. I wish I’d grabbed a book from my apartment—all I have is the Cosmo with the address and number on it and I’ve already read it from cover to cover. I reread an interview with Cameron Diaz. Cosmo asks her what the secret is to being an effective flirt—“Is it �
�flipping your goddamn hair,’ like Lucy Liu advised you to do in Angels?” And Cameron Diaz says, “Yes, flip the goddamn hair [laughs]. I think the secret is trying to be charming. I always try to make a man laugh, and usually, it’s by making fun of myself.” I wonder if her answer would be different in 2013, if she would say something so embarrassing and unfeminist-like. I try to focus on the trees, the way the light filters through them, but there’s Susan Lacey again—she is definitely the younger, dark-haired one. Perhaps she’s even beautiful, but it isn’t going to save her.
Less than three hours later, we’re here. He pulls into a gas station and I slip my card into the slot before he can ask and go inside, buy a 16-ounce beer and a king-size Twix.
He’s still pumping when I come back out, talking on his burner. I get in the truck and take off my flip-flops—my toenails bright red, so pretty.
He hands me a receipt, which I let fall to the floor without looking at it. I type the address into my phone, direct him through the city. For some reason the sound isn’t working and I can’t get it to work even though the media volume is turned all the way up.
“Don’t you have a boyfriend that lives here?” he asks. He knows I have an ex-boyfriend who lives here. He lives in a high-rise apartment and drives a black Mercedes with a personalized license plate that means supreme ruler in some Asian language. He is a horrible person who made me go to church with him on Sundays, a Californian, a former marine, a drunk. I have no idea where I find these people.
“No,” I say.
He looks at me.
“That was like three years ago.”
“When’s the last time you talked to him?”
“Not since we broke up,” I say. “Richard.”
“Dick,” he says, “that’s right, good old Dick.”
“Let’s talk about your ex-girlfriends. Were they all ugly? Make a left at the next light.”
“I don’t date ugly chicks.”
“You know I’ve met a lot of the girls you dated?”
He sighs because I’m right—they were all weirdly tall or hook-nosed; one of them had so many tattoos she looked deranged. “How much further?” he asks.
“Farther.”
“Okay,” he says, “Jesus Christ. How much farther?”
“Three miles. If he has her address, why’s he need a picture? Why doesn’t he just send somebody there to kill her?”
“We’re going to her job,” he says, and then, “Hey, babe? Could you just stop talking for just a minute?”
We pull into the parking lot of an Office Depot. “Is this it?” he asks.
“This is the address you wrote down.”
Office Depots depress me and I refuse to get out. I open my bag and hand him the camera, turn it on and off. “This button here,” I say. “I hope she’s in there and we can get this over with. I want to go swimming, and maybe gamble. I love to gamble.” I’ve decided I’ll definitely rent a room at a casino, a nice one, and order room service and drink overpriced drinks at the hotel bar and fuck him in a huge bed with too many pillows.
I watch his back as he walks into the store: stocky and bald-headed, tattoos covering his thick arms. He’s not attractive in the conventional way but he makes beautiful babies. I’ll never have a baby with him but I like the idea of it, having a small version of him that I could control, who would listen to me and obey me and tell me every thought that popped into his head. The doors slide open and he’s gone, disappeared into the sadness of Office Depot forever. The turn of events deflates me.
Ten minutes later, he gets back in the truck.
“So?”
“No Suzie.”
“What took you so long?”
“I bought some envelopes,” he says, and tosses the bag to the floor. He hands me the camera and I immediately check to see if he took any pictures; he didn’t. I turn it off. “What now?”
“I don’t know. Let me think for a minute.”
“Drive us to a nice hotel and I’ll rent a room and we can pretend we’re on a stakeout. Set up a command center.”
“This isn’t a game,” he says, pulling out of the lot. “It’s not a fucking game.”
He drives in an angry silence. When someone is mad at me, I don’t know what to do except be mad back. He drives fast, like he knows where he’s going, and I don’t ask. When he decides to talk to me, I won’t be ready to talk to him, I tell myself, and it makes me feel better but then I start thinking about all the things I want to say. Every one of them is a question. I look out the window as he drives and I have no idea where he’s going or what we’re doing. I want to be inside his head for one minute, just one minute so I can get ahead of him, or at least not feel so behind. We could be here to kill Susan Lacey, for all I know, though I don’t think he would do that for fifteen hundred dollars but maybe it’s fifteen thousand and then I’d go to prison as an accessory because they wouldn’t believe me, they never do. I’d get five years, at least, even if all my people pooled their money to get me the best lawyer.
I tell him I have to pee again and he pulls into a gas station, throws the truck into park so fast it lurches. In the bathroom, I wash my hands, splash water on my face. I look at myself in the mirror and think, Fuck you. Fuck you, you fuckup. I think all my problems might be solved if I could look in the mirror and see my ugliness reflected back at me.
As I’m purchasing a six-pack, my phone rings and I know it’s my mother so I don’t answer. I don’t even look. She’ll call again in twenty minutes or half an hour and ask what I am doing, if I’m okay. She always wants to know if I’m okay, if I’m happy, which makes it impossible to talk to her.
“Where are we going?” I ask as coldly as possible.
“I’m dropping you off at my father’s house,” he says. “You can spend the night there.”
“Oh no, I’m not going there. I don’t know your father.”
“You’ll be fine,” he says. “It’s safe there.”
“Why? What’s going on?”
“I have to find this woman.”
“I know, that’s why we’re here. We have to find her so let’s find her.”
“You don’t understand,” he says.
“You’re right, I don’t. Explain it to me.”
I open a beer and he takes it out of my hand. I open another. I tell him I am not, under any circumstances, going to sit and watch TV with some old man I don’t know. An old man he hates and doesn’t talk to. I had forgotten that his father even lived here. I tell him to take me to a hotel but he doesn’t take me to his father’s house or to a hotel. He takes me to a bar. We get out and I follow him inside. It’s not the kind of place we frequent—a fancy wine bar with too many mirrors, where I feel underdressed and greasy. The Office Depot girl wouldn’t be here.
I sit next to him on a barstool and he orders his usual: a Budweiser and a shot of Jameson. I order a gin martini, dirty. The olives are pierced through a long wooden stick, dangerous, and I eat them carefully, one at a time, and remember that there are pleasures in life; sometimes they’re so small they shouldn’t compensate for all of the shit, but they do. They really do. Once the olives are gone, I look up hotel reviews on my phone even though I know where I want to stay: The Hard Rock. There are young, good-looking people there and they let you bring your dog.
“Hey, babe,” he says. “Hey, love.” I don’t look at him. Other women may do their best to be nice and accommodating but I try to be as unlikeable as possible, test men too soon. The right one will love me for it, I imagine, though I’ve been through enough to know that the right one doesn’t exist, this perfect man who will be whole yet malleable, who will allow me to be as ugly as I want.
Twenty minutes later, I’m in a hotel room by myself: two beds, a large bathroom with an array of soaps and lotions, everything perfectly beige. It’s on the fourteenth floor overlooking the Gulf and I stand in the window and try to make out the barrier islands: Cat Island, Ship, Horn, some other one I forget. In ’69, Camille sp
lit Ship Island in two.
It’s not the first time I’ve waited for him in a hotel room. I’ve given up so much to be with him and some of these things are for the best. He has taught me sex without love, a Buddhist’s degree of unattachment. He’s taught me that I can only rely on myself and it’s a good lesson, one I needed to learn. He also taught me to drive a stick shift and put cream cheese on sandwiches, an appreciation of westerns. Everyone leaves something behind; there are so many things I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t had all of them.
I know he’ll show up in the morning when it’s time to check out and it’ll be done: the picture taken, cash in hand, an inexplicably large amount unaccounted for. I call room service and order a bacon cheeseburger with fries and a strawberry milkshake and eat everything including most of the condiments in their fat little jars. Then I lie in bed and watch the most boring thing I can find on TV—old women selling garish jewelry and elastic waist pantsuits—and the longer I watch, the more I begin to imagine a world in which these things might appeal to me.
I call my mother; I can’t help it. She always answers, even if she’s with her priest or in the movie theater.
“Hello?” she says. “Who’s this?”
“Mom? Are you there?”
“I was asleep,” she says. “I fell asleep. What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock.” I don’t know why I called her but I do it constantly, against my will. More often even than she calls me. I call her because she is there, because she loves me, and because one day she’ll die and I won’t know how to live in a world without her in it. I don’t know how to live in this one.
When we hang up, I look at my phone: three minutes and twenty-seven seconds. It seemed like so much longer.
Sometime during the night, he comes in. I pretend to sleep as he takes off his clothes and gets into bed, reaches a cold hand beneath my shirt.
“Tell me,” I say, swatting his hand away. “What happened?”
“I got it.”
“Where’s my camera?”
“On the dresser.”
“What’d you do?”