Raw: A Love Story

by Mark Haskell Smith

  Harriet could tell he was serious. Worse, he might be right.

  “Okay. Fine. But back to my original question, I know we’re on the show when you’re filming us, but how are we on the show when there’s no one filming us?”

  The Ninja smiled and waved his hand around the RV as he spoke.

  “This is like a rolling TV studio. There are cameras and mikes everywhere. All digitally recorded to a server. When I get to Denver I just uplink it back to the producer.”

  Harriet realized her jaw had dropped. “So everything I say or do is on tape? Without my permission?”

  The Ninja nodded.

  “That’s how we roll.”

  …

  Sepp lay on the water bed and looked over at Roxy. A couple of RV sconces gave the bedroom a soft glow. The lighting was meant to be moody, the mood being romantic, but it didn’t flatter Roxy’s features, it only made her look sharp and bitchy. He couldn’t believe that he had once been madly in love with her. Right now he couldn’t even imagine that he’d ever been attracted to her, that he’d kissed her and stuck his penis inside her. Dude, that’s totally repulsive. With her teased-out hair and weird fingernails and pounds of makeup and her brightly veneered teeth and her lame-ass tattoos, she looked like a swamp-thing Kardashian. Compared to Harriet, who didn’t even wear makeup, Roxy was some kind of android; and who wants to bone a droid when you can have the real thing? That’s what Dr. Jan would say. You never saw Princess Leia or Luke Skywalker sneaking off with C-3PO.

  Roxy snaked her French-tipped claw toward his crotch and reached for his zipper.

  “Roxy. Stop.”

  Her lips jumped into a practiced pout that was supposed to show that she knew she was being naughty, but didn’t want to be denied. Sepp had seen it before. The world had seen it.

  “What’s wrong? The Seppster not in the mood?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I know you’ve still got a thing for me.”

  Sepp looked at her. He really didn’t have a thing for her. Not anymore. “Then you are trippin’.”

  She pushed the pout out, making it more noticeable.

  “Remember when we used to do the nasty?”

  “Of course I remember.”

  She slid a reptilian hand up his thigh. “Wouldn’t you like to go back to the good old days? A little trip in my hot, wet time machine?”

  Sepp gently picked up her hand, like it was a half-gnawed turkey leg, and set it on the bed.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Roxy laughed. “A blow job, stupid.”

  “I don’t want a blow job.”

  Roxy flipped her hair and scrunched up her face. “Are you gay?”

  Sepp shook his head. “If I was gay I’d want a blow job.”

  Her head snapped. She wasn’t used to rejection. “Not from me.”

  “Whatever.” He didn’t want to tell her that she looked like one of the drag queens he used to see in a club in San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter.

  Roxy regrouped. She sat up next to him, letting her cleavage droop in his face.

  “What about the show?”

  “What about it?”

  “We should do it for the show. Spice things up. Get our picture on the cover of Us Weekly again.”

  Sepp shook his head. “This is a different show.”

  Roxy flipped her hair and made a face. “Are you really that into little Miss Brainiac?”

  Sepp nodded. Roxy whistled.

  “Man. I never took you for a guy who’d get hot for teacher. Don’t you think she’s a little out of your league?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She’s smart, dude. And you’re not. That’s what I mean.”

  Sepp knew that Harriet was smart, and yet that was one of the things he loved about her.

  “That’s what’s cool about her.”

  “Yeah, till she dumps your dumb ass.”

  …

  The Ninja had gone on to explain to Harriet how the confessional worked. He’d rigged the bathroom to have a camera you could turn off and on. Just flip the switch next to the mirror, sit on the toilet, and spill your guts. Sepp had already done that—in fact there was almost an hour and a half of the dude yapping and philosophizing about his life, his loves, and anything else he could think of. Harriet had thought he’d just eaten something that disagreed with his digestive tract.

  She went into the bathroom to check it out. The facility was what you’d expect, a prefab plastic coffin with tacky extruded-vinyl detailing in a vaguely Southwestern style with teal cacti and salmon-colored cow skulls patterned against a deep beige.

  She looked at the mirror, then right below it, and, sure enough, peeking out of the wall, was the small unblinking lens of a camera. She found the switch, the microphone, everything. Sepp hadn’t lied. He wasn’t delusional or insane. Technology had turned their reality into a reality TV show.

  Harriet had to sit down on the toilet and consider what it all meant. It was like an epistemological nightmare. There was the reality of her and Sepp in the van. There was the reality inside her head, her consciousness. But then there was another, parallel, reality acting as a kind of, well, she didn’t know what. But that reality had been captured on a hard drive somewhere in the van and could definitely have an impact on her other reality. All this time he’d been in here “confessing” while she’d just assumed he needed more fiber in his diet. She had to admire him, he didn’t need Heidegger or Wittgenstein or even Bertrand Russell to understand what reality was. He possessed an intuitive philosophical relativism. Sure, sometimes he sounded confused, but he was able to go with the flow, to just accept the reality of the moment and inhabit it, whereas she was starting to freak out.

  She wondered if she had the legal rights to keep them from airing any of it. Surely they would need her permission. Then again, maybe by coming on the tour she’d given them implicit permission. It was Sepp’s tour and Sepp’s show and the show had gotten on the road whether she liked it or not. Everything she’d said—a virtual confession to murder, an admission they would broadcast on cable television for the whole world to see—was recorded and saved on a hard drive somewhere in the RV. The first thing she needed to do was find it and destroy it. That was keeping it real.

  …

  Harriet handed the giant plastic dildo back to Roxy.

  “You’ll need this.”

  Roxy glared and snapped her head. “Ooh. You’re scary.”

  Harriet frowned. “Out.”

  Sepp shrugged. “You oughta know the rule, Roxy, you made it up.”

  Roxy rolled off the water bed and tugged at her tank top, holstering her silicone orbs, and stood up. She turned to Harriet. “He’s a lousy lay, anyway. Not that you’d know the difference.”

  Roxy walked out of the bedroom with an exaggerated waddle, swinging her hips so that her ass cheeks rose and fell in a way that Harriet assumed men found appealing; to her, it looked like Roxy needed physical therapy.

  Harriet turned toward Sepp. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “I didn’t mess around with her. Honest.”

  “I’m not doubting that.”

  Harriet sat down on the water bed, suddenly aware that she was being filmed. “So, Sepp, baby, when you were in the confession booth, what did you say?”

  “I dunno. You just kinda talk.”

  “Did you mention the hotel and Curtis and why we’re here?”

  “You mean the murder?”

  Harriet stared at him wide-eyed. Her look reminded Sepp that they were supposed to be discreet. “I mean the accidental death that we covered up.”

  Harriet felt her stomach lurch. “You said all that to the bathroom?”

  “It’s called the confessional.”

  “You said all that?”

  Sepp nodded. “I told the whole story. That’s what you’re supposed to do.”

  Harriet felt her body sag as if her muscles just suddenly stopped holding
her up. It was hard to breathe. She sat back on the water bed, feeling it roll with her weight, and hugged her knees to her chest.

  Sepp must’ve sensed she was upset. “But they’ll edit all that stuff out.” He reached over and stroked her leg. “I also said I was in love with you.”

  Harriet thought about that. It was sweet, really. Touching. This is what happens when you get involved with a dimwit. Sure, a smart guy would’ve kept his mouth shut, but then he would’ve had neuroses and needs and problems with intimacy and commitment. Harriet realized she needed to take control of the situation.

  “We’ve got to erase that hard drive.”

  Sepp looked worried.

  “I don’t think we can do that.”

  “We have to.”

  Sepp looked at her, his face registering an expression that Harriet could only assume meant that he didn’t get it, he didn’t have a clue why she would want to erase anything. Would erasing the reality of the show mean erasing the reality of the world? What was Sepp so afraid of?

  “Don’t you want to be an author?”

  It was a good question. Harriet did want to be an author, more than anything else she wanted to get her second novel published—a bestseller would just be the cherry on top—but she didn’t want to be a murderess and she definitely didn’t want to go to jail. She realized that the reality TV show didn’t care; it was just filming on, recording her panic and concern, and it would, eventually, shit out some version of what was happening. That’s what they did. They were like some weird kind of psychoactive drug that manipulated events to create an alternate narrative. It occurred to Harriet that reality TV had a lot in common with a Haruki Murakami novel. But then it’s a lot different outside the narrative watching the show and inside the narrative having your life turned upside down. Harriet had to do something and the one thing she wasn’t going to do was sit there and let some TV show define her reality. She was going to create her own reality.

  For Harriet it was an epiphany. “Epiphany.” That comes from the manifestation of Christ.

  41

  New Mexico

  They had passed through Santa Fe before the sun came up, following the edge of the Sangre de Cristo mountains, stopping off for huevos rancheros at a twenty-four-hour truck stop diner. They’d been driving for hours. Harriet and Sepp fell asleep, tangled in each other’s arms on the water bed, while Roxy sat on the couch and texted her thumbs raw sending messages to her friends and intermittently snorting lines of coke with the Ninja.

  As the sun blinked over the horizon and started to beam into the RV, the Ninja felt the speed and coke and caffeine beginning to fade. His jaw muscles hurt from the amphetamine clench they’d been locked in and his stomach gurgled from the chilies he’d eaten. He popped curiously strong peppermints like a chain-smoker as he fought to counter an onslaught of gastric acid–laced repeater burps. He knew he’d need to stop soon. Shoot some filler interviews and maybe catch a couple hours of sleep before popping another pill and hitting the road to Denver.

  He checked his maps and remembered that they weren’t far from a place where he’d filmed an ultramarathon early in his career. It was the perfect spot to chill out and grab some new footage with a dramatic backdrop. He flicked the turn signal and exited the I-25, just before Raton, New Mexico, onto Highway 64, turning east, driving directly into the rising sun. It felt good to put his sunglasses back on.

  The Ninja drove about twenty miles down the road until he spotted a scenic overlook and pulled into it. He parked the RV at the edge of a gravel lot overlooking the Capulin Volcano National Monument. It would be the perfect place to get some reaction footage of Roxy. The Ninja could tell she was in rare form, coked out, angry, frustrated, waving the giant purple dildo around like a nutjob, ready to unleash a torrent of foul-mouthed outrage and scorn. The dormant volcano in the background would add a nice subliminal touch. Would Roxy erupt? Stay tuned.

  The Ninja ground his teeth and smiled as he set the parking brake and turned off the engine. He was good at his job.

  He rewarded himself with a small paper cup filled with bourbon. Just the thing to smooth out the morning. He climbed out of the RV and walked to the edge of the scenic overlook. He rested his bourbon on a rickety wooden fence, obviously erected to keep numbskulls from falling over, and peered at the canyon floor below. It was a good two hundred feet down. Maybe Roxy would freak out and do a Wile E. Coyote and crater on the canyon floor. That’d look good on TV.

  The Ninja unzipped his fly, tugged his dick out of his pants, and let a stream of urine arc over the edge. As his piss rained into the abyss, he lifted his bourbon and toasted the sunrise. It was going to be a good day.

  …

  Sepp woke up and ran his hands along his belly. He stopped. He felt around his torso, a sense of panic rising. The chiseled cut of his abs had rounded. They were still there, he could feel them, but the sharp definition was gone. It was like a soft blanket of smoothness had been laid over them. Dude. He was fat.

  Sepp climbed out of bed and pulled on his shorts. He was going for a run. Even if it was in flip-flops and Bermudas, he was hitting the road. He had to do something. A slow jog to burn off some fat. He wished he had his fancy ASICS trainers, but they were sitting in his bedroom in San Diego.

  He heard the water bed slosh and turned to see Harriet waking up.

  “Where are you going?”

  Sepp shook his head. “I’ll be back in an hour. I’ve gotta go for a run before things get out of hand.”

  Harriet heard the RV door shut. She heard Sepp saying something to Roxy and the Ninja outside. She was alone in the RV. A perfect time to look for the hard drive. She tried to hop out of bed, but her sudden movement only caused the water to slosh violently, turning the bed into choppy surf. She had to roll off onto the floor.

  Harriet went into the living room of the RV and peeked out the window. She could see Roxy standing in front of the camera, waving her hands in the air, screeching about something. The Ninja was with her, looking through the viewfinder, goading her.

  Harriet began to search. She knew enough to be methodical. She started in the first cupboard and worked her way across one side of the van. She had to be quiet—no banging of doors or rifling of drawers. But she knew she was looking for something specific: computer gear and telltale cables and electrical outlets.

  Harriet finished one side, the kitchenette part, and went to look under the front seat, in the glove box, and below the dashboard. Harriet felt her heart leap into her throat when she heard Roxy shout. She looked up, out the front window, expecting to see a manicured digit pointed in accusation at her, but Roxy was just shouting, spewing obscenities like a crack-whore Krakatoa.

  “Cocksucking motherfucking bitch!”

  The Ninja took his eye off the camera and straightened.

  “Roxy. Please. Every other word can be a profanity, but they can’t just bleep the whole sentence.”

  “I don’t see why the fuck not.”

  “No one will know what you’re saying. They need context for every ‘fuck’ and ‘motherfucker.’ You need words in between. Trust me. We’ve tried this every which way.”

  Roxy folded her arms over her chest and cocked a hip out to the side. Then she did it. Hair flip. Head snap. Snarl. “How would you say it?”

  The Ninja shrugged. “Try ‘That stuck-up, fucking librarian.’”

  “Librarian?”

  Hair flip.

  “Librarian? Is that the best you can do?”

  Louder this time, followed by a head snap.

  The Ninja took a sip from his paper cup. He looked at Roxy. “Bookish?”

  “What does that mean?”

  “She likes books.”

  Roxy thought about it. Flipped her hair. “Lame.”

  “How about school marm?”

  “What’s a ‘marm’?”

  The Ninja drained his paper cup, crumpled it, and dropped it on the ground. “Just stick with ‘librarian.’”

/>   “How about I say ‘flat-chested motherfucking book bitch cunt’? Is that okay?”

  …

  Jogging in flip-flops on a road of hard potholed concrete and gravel is not the smartest thing a person can do. So Sepp adjusted his gait from his normal loping stride to a more flip-flop-friendly shuffle and then veered off the road onto a hiking trail. It helped, but he could still feel blisters forming in between his toes where the plastic strap was chafing. But it felt good to move, good to feel his heartbeat increase, his pores open, and sweat start to slick his skin. Maybe he should just keep moving, put some serious distance between himself and the crazy shit Roxy was stirring up.

  But that would mean leaving Harriet behind, and Sepp couldn’t do that. Harriet was the first woman he had ever known to give him a reality check. Not only that, she cured his erectile dysfunction the first night he’d met her. She was like a sorceress or something. Sepp realized that while he thought he’d been in love with Roxy, Harriet was the one who showed him what real love was like. If it really was real love. How can you be sure? It, like, freaked him out to realize that the people he thought he’d been in love with weren’t real relationships. Those were reality TV relationships and while they looked and felt real while you were on TV, once you weren’t on TV then the feelings and stuff weren’t real anymore even if they felt super real. It was confusing.

  Sepp saw a lizard scamper off a rock as he jogged on. He wished he was smart enough to understand the book that the cool bookstore dude had given him but it was just too hard. Big words and sentences that, like, didn’t make sense. Maybe he wasn’t smart enough to know what reality was. Was there one big reality that everyone in the world shared? Or were there different realities, like individual pizzas? Sepp wondered if his reality was different than Harriet’s. They probably were, he figured, like they probably were really totally different until they came together and had sex. During sex they seemed to share a reality. What if sex was the one big reality for everyone? We all live in our heads, everyone is the star of their own show, until we hook up with someone and then that’s how we know what’s real. Because that reality is something you can share. Sepp was pretty sure that was true, that that was what Dr. Jan meant when she said to be authentic.