“I didn’t mean to tell you off. I’m just letting you know.”
“No, no, I know. You’re right, though. It’s not a good approach.”
She finished her transaction at the pump and screwed her gas cap back on. I felt bad. I hadn’t meant to fuss at her, or make her feel bad about what she was or wasn’t doing on her journey to becoming a writer.
I cleared my throat. It felt like I was about to make a mistake, but I plunged forward, heedless of all the various warning klaxons sounding in my brain.
“You ever ridden on a motorcycle?” I asked. “And don’t even start with scooters or mopeds. Those don’t count.”
“Never,” she said. “Not even scooters or mopeds. None of the above. I barely even know how to ride a bicycle. Wasn’t really a priority for me as a kid.”
Now the warning lights were flashing in my head, doing their best to blind me to what I was looking to do. “Want to go for a ride?”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really. If you want to.” My heart fluttered a little with anxiety, and I realized it was because I actually wanted her to say yes.
“Do you want to follow me to the motel so I can park the car?” she asked.
“It would be okay here, if you wanted to leave it.”
“Here at the pump?” She looked a little dubious at that proposal. “I could at least move it into a parking spot.”
I swept my arm around at all the empty pumps. “I really doubt that there’s going to be a run on gasoline while we’re gone. I won’t keep you for very long.”
“Well, you know your town,” she said. “But if I get a ticket for leaving this car where it’s not supposed to be…”
“I’ll just get Katie to take care of it,” I said.
“Katie?”
“Friend of the club. The bartender’s girlfriend. Happens to work for the county police.”
“Nice. I guess it’s handy to be an active member of a small community sometimes. Pays to know everyone, I mean.”
“It is pretty convenient.” I handed her my helmet. “Climb aboard.”
“God, I can’t believe I’m actually doing this,” she said, giggling breathlessly. Her excitement made me grin, forget about who she was and why she was in Rio Seco.
“Just stay calm and hang on,” I said as she fastened my helmet beneath her chin.
“Don’t you need a helmet?” she asked, suddenly worried. “Oh my God, if we crashed and you cracked your head open on the ground like an egg because I was wearing your helmet”
“We’re not going to crash,” I assured her. “I’m good at this. Just trust me, and try and enjoy yourself.”
Amy started to say something else, but I revved the engine and she clamped onto me, her fingers digging into my shoulders. I took it slow down the main street, giving a couple of extra revs outside the bar, then really opened it up outside city limits. At first, I thought Amy was screaming at the speed we were going. But when I chanced a glance over my shoulder at her, I realized she was laughing in sheer pleasure, her dark hair whipping behind her, eyes alight with excitement.
“Keep your eyes on the road!” she shouted at me, and I whipped my head back around to comply. We weren’t in any danger, but it showed just how new this experience was to her. I was stunned to realize just how happy I was to share this with her. Riding always made me happy, sweeping away whatever worried me. Sharing that happiness was even better.
I took Amy along one of my favorite routes, an old, seldom-used road that retreated into the desert, approaching the mountains. When we did club rides, we almost always voted to go on this one. It was beautiful no matter what the season was, or the time of day. That was one thing that a lot of people didn’t realize about the nature of New Mexico. Depending on what time it was, the weather, and the season, the natural scenery could be completely different. One mountain was different whether it was dawn or dusk or the middle of the day. The colors changed, or different angles of the sun brought out distinct outcroppings and details that you might not have otherwise seen. This road was one of the best places to see that, though I turned around much sooner than I would’ve wanted to, cognizant of Amy behind me, of what she might think of me taking her deep into the middle of nowhere.
I popped a brief wheelie on a smooth patch of road just to hear her shriek, to feel her clutch at me harder.
“You’re an asshole, Sloan!” she yelled at me, but she was laughing all the same, exulting in the vibration of the wheels against the pavement, the wind whipping at our clothes. This was really nice. I had never really taken anyone for a ride on my motorcycle before. Just hadn’t found someone I’d wanted to share this with. Amy was the last person I would’ve thought I’d like to ride with, but here we were, having an amazing time, and I almost wished we didn’t have to end it so soon.
“What did you think?” I asked, walking the bike in to the pumps at the gas station. As I’d promised, Amy’s car was still parked there, unscathed and unmolested. There wasn’t even anyone else using any of the other pumps.
“I think I’m a motorcycle fan, now,” she said, swinging her leg over and stepping away from the bike. “Oh, my God. My knees are seriously weak right now.”
I laughed. “Be careful. I’d never hear the end of it if I let you fall down and hurt yourself after I took you riding.”
“It was just so amazing,” she gushed, handing me back my helmet. “I’ve never felt anything like that before. Maybe being on a rollercoaster comes close. But I felt so free. Like it was just us and the wind and the road. This place is so beautiful. I hadn’t really explored outside of town before.”
“It really grows on you,” I said. “The desert is really something.”
“The desert and the mountains,” she agreed. “Being on a motorcycle is the best way to see them, in my opinion.”
“Your car will feel like a prison now that you’ve tasted the kind of freedom a motorcycle can give you,” I promised her. “You’re going to start feeling really restless, now.”
“Screw it,” she said, laughing. “If I really wanted to, I could take that car right back to Albuquerque and exchange it for a motorcycle. Right? They rent motorcycles, don’t they?”
“I think so, but you’d probably have to take a class on it,” I said. “This isn’t your car?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “This is just a rental.”
“You don’t live in Albuquerque?”
“No. Just flew in.”
“Flew in from where?”
“You’re asking a lot of questions, aren’t you?” she teased me. “Isn’t that supposed to be my job?”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry.”
“You’re fine. I pried first. You can pry, too, if you want.”
“That’s all right. I respect your privacy.”
“It’s okay to be curious. I flew in from Los Angeles.”
“Really?” I wouldn’t have guessed that. She didn’t seem like she belonged in LA. Of course, I didn’t have any better idea for where she belonged. It certainly wasn’t Rio Seco.
“Yeah, really,” she said. “That’s where I live.”
“How long are you going to be staying here in town?”
Amy just shrugged at that. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t have anything to get back to Los Angeles for? Like a job?”
“When this opportunity came up, I quit my job,” she said as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “I subleased my apartment so I could afford to stay in Rio Seco for as long as I needed to.”
“But who’s footing your motel bill here?”
“I had a little money saved away,” she said. “If the story’s successful, the editor said there might be the opportunity to get some kind of retrograded reimbursement for whatever expenses I incur here.”
I felt the guiltiest in that moment that I ever had since Amy crashed into my life. She had given up her life in Los Angelesher life and her li
velihood for this opportunity, and I wasn’t even really planning on telling her what she needed to know. It wasn’t out of meanness on my part; it was out of necessity. If I didn’t need to talk about it, I didn’t. Situations where I imagined I would need to talk about it included someone demanding that I tell them every last detail on pain of death, a loaded pistol pressed against my temple.
The situation with Amy was a lot different, but I still felt terrible.
“What happens if you don’t get your story?” I asked, hesitant to find out.
“I’ll go back to Los Angeles, surf some couches while I find another job probably in food service, because I have the experience and positions there are not hard to get then evict my tenant and move back into my apartment for as long as I can afford the rent.”
“It sounds like you have a plan,” I said cautiously.
“I mean, I do, but I don’t want to fail,” she said. “I had a good job before, in LA, even if it wasn’t the job I wanted. I don’t want to go back into food service. I want to be a writer. I want to succeed.”
“I hope you do succeed, then, if that’s what you want.” It was hard to wish her ill. She seemed so determined. It had to take a lot of guts to quit a sure thing in pursuit of the thing she truly wanted. Most people didn’t have the courage to do that, I’d bet.
“Does that mean that you’re actually considering talking to me now?” Amy asked, fidgeting a little with her car keys.
“What?” She’d taken me surprise by that one, but maybe that was what she’d wanted a sudden, awkward acquiescence to which she could hold me.
She shrugged, her expression neutral no, innocent. “I just thought if you were willing to give me a ride on your motorcycle, you might be willing to chat a little bit more. We’ve been having a good talk so far, haven’t we? You know me a little better, now.”
“If this is about me telling you my story about Iraq…”
“Yes. It is.” She smiled at me. “Just so we’re clear.”
“No,” I said, watching as her face fell a little bit. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m just not ready to talk about that.”
“Do you think you’ll ever be ready?”
I shook my head, looking into the distance. Things had been so simple on the open road, Amy laughing like a maniac in my ear. It had been so simple, so joyful. Now, everything was ugly and complicated again.
“Sloan?”
“I mean, there’s no real way of knowing,” I said. “Right now, though, the answer’s no. I don’t want to talk about it. Whether that’ll change in a week or a month or a year, I have no idea.”
“Okay.” Amy nodded. “I’ll take that.”
I had to stop her as she turned away, toward her car. “I don’t want to disappoint you, or lead you on. Or give you hope that I’ll eventually come around. I just want to be clear about that.”
“I get it, Sloan.” Her eyes twinkled. “But would you blame me if I hope you’ll come around?”
“No. I guess I wouldn’t.”
“All right, then. See you around.”
Rio Seco was a small town, sure, but after that ride, it really started to get ridiculous. Either Amy was following me or fate was having a laugh. I began to run into her at nearly every turn. I passed by her walking down the side of the road one morning on the way to Chuck and Haley’s new house, then circled back around.
“Are you okay?” I shouted at her, over the roaring of my bike’s engine.
“I’m on a jog,” she explained, sweat beading on her forehead. It was already hot, even though it was early. “Do people here not do things like this? You are the fourth person who has pulled over to ask me what I was doing.”
“I’m guessing people are trying to see if your car broke down and you needed any help,” I said. “The desert can be dangerous on foot.”
“I have water. I’m well hydrated. I’m not pushing myself. It’s interval training you caught me on the walking portion of the workout.”
“If you say so,” I said, and she huffed, obviously offended.
“Well, unless there’s a gym hidden somewhere in this place…”
“Nope. No gym. Not in Rio Seco.”
“Then the good citizens here are just going to have to get used to seeing me get my exercise like this.”
She walked purposefully forward, and I shadowed her.
“Are you sure you don’t want a ride back to your motel?” I asked. “Or I’ll take you to the job site I’m heading to. It’s for Chuck and Haley. Haley’s”
“Oh, I met Haley at the bar. She works there, right?”
“That’s right. And Chuck’s in the club, runs the mechanic shop.”
“Well, that’s nice and all, but I’m trying to exercise here, Sloan. As tempting as it is, I don’t need a ride anywhere. That’s what my feet are for.”
“Okay.” I didn’t like this. Some motorist who wasn’t paying a lick of attention could easily clip her and seriously hurt or kill her. And if she was from Los Angeles, she probably didn’t know how to handle herself in the dry, relentless desert heat that was typical of summer here around Rio Seco. She did hold a bottle of water in her right hand, but I doubted there was enough in it to keep her going.
“Was there something else you needed?” she asked me, her voice dry but sharp. “You ready to talk about Iraq yet?”
“Not today, I’m afraid.” I hesitated, keeping pace with her on the road. “Do you at least have your cell phone with you?”
She tapped a band around her arm that I hadn’t noticed before. “It’s counting my steps.”
“Would you please call me if you run into any trouble?” I asked her. “If you get too hot? It’s not worth pushing yourself if you end up getting heatstroke and that shit isn’t anything to mess around with.”
“Fine,” she said. “You’re worse than my parents. I know my limits. It’s not like I’ve never worked out before.”
“In the desert? In the summer?”
“I’m not stupid, Sloan, even if you insist on patronizing me like I might be.”
“All right, then. Have a good workout.”
I zoomed off faster than I needed to, kicking up a little more dust than I intended, doing all I could to resist the urge to look over my shoulder and check that she was okay. Why was I even worried about her? She’d made it clear that she was doing just fine on her own. I just didn’t want anything bad to happen to her. It would be my fault, if something did. She was only hanging around here because she was hoping I might change my mind, might share my experiences with her. If I would’ve caved in and spilled all my secrets, she could’ve already been on her way back to Los Angeles, or on to bigger and better things.
If anything happened to her, it was on me.
It wasn’t until the sun was well on its way to the horizon when I had an even more insidious thoughtmaybe I was resisting telling Amy details about Iraq because I secretly wanted her to stick around in Rio Seco for as long as possible. Whenever I ran into her in public unexpectedly, my heart raced. Maybe it wasn’t panic. Maybe it was excitement. That motorcycle ride with her was something of a lingering memory, popping up in the strangest of places while I was trying to go to sleep at night, or taking a shower, the phantom feel of her torso pressed up against my back doing interesting and wonderful things to me.
It got to the point that I didn’t trust myself around her, that I would walk in the opposite direction or make a quick detour if I saw her or thought I was going to see her. If anyone had been casually observing me during those tense days, I’m sure I looked hilarious, darting in and out of alleyways, backtracking on my bike, staying overlong in one place just to rush through the next, certain she would walk in the door at any second.
It felt like I was losing my mind over this.
I made a trip late one evening to the lone grocery store in town just before closing time. If Amy didn’t have anything to do during the day, I figured she’d make her supply runs then
. Only fools like me or people with last-minute emergencies went to the store at this hour.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
Fools like me and Amy, apparently, as she tapped me on the shoulder as we stood in the checkout line, our carts and their contents on display for all the world to see. It was a stupid thing, but I blushed a little at the toilet paper package taking up most of the room in my own cart. If I bought it in bulk like that, I justified, it would save me the shame of having to buy it more often.
“Hey, there,” I said. “Store’s about to close.”
“I know. Kind of makes me miss the twenty-four-hour places in LA. I could get my fix whenever I needed it that way. My fix and my groceries.”
“Yeah…things tend to kind of shut down around here at night. Everywhere except the bar.”
“You’re right.” She watched me as I rocked back and forth, fidgeting in my discomfort at being around her like this. The line was moving slowly. There were apparently a lot of fools out tonight, trying to slip in some last-minute shopping before they locked us out.
“So what’ve you been up to?” I asked, uncomfortable enough to try and make small talk with someone I wasn’t even sure I wanted to talk to at all.
“Just doing my interval training,” she said. “Let you in on a secret?”
“Okay.”
“It’s not really interval training. I just call it that to make me feel better about myself. I just jog until I get tired, then I walk.”
“Hey, no judgment, here,” I said, putting my hands up. “It’s a lot more than most people do.”
“You look like you keep in shape.”
“I’ve been known to jog from time to time,” I said. “Never in the summer, though.”
“What, you just let yourself go in the summer?” She gave me a dubious once-over, and I had the strange sensation of being undressed with her eyes. “I find that very hard to believe.”
“I just try to do some pushups and sit-ups every day,” I said. “Honestly, I think it’s the job. I’m always squatting and bending and reaching. It’s basically yoga. Or calisthenics. Something. I don’t know.”
“Uh-huh.” She cocked her head. “Maybe it’s all that running around you’ve been doing to avoid me.”
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