by Chris Cander
She tore the two pages in half, smiling, then folded them up and tore them over and over again until her life was too thick to rip further apart. The sun hovered at the horizon.
“I love you,” she said. Then she flung the scraps of paper into the air, and the wind scattered them into moments, the notes now separate and meaningless. “I love you!” she called out as loudly as she could. “I love you!” And then she stepped off the crumbling edge of the rock and followed the music into Bruce’s waiting arms.
IT WAS CLOSE TO NOON when they pulled into the gas station across from the hotel. They got out and stretched, and as Greg unscrewed the cap he said, “I’m hungry. You?”
“Famished. But I need to take a shower first. Do you think they’ve given away our rooms?”
“They’re ours as long as we want them,” he said. “Oh, and if you’d like to move in with me, I won’t object.”
She smiled. “I’ll meet you at the restaurant in twenty minutes, okay?” she said, collecting her bags from the back. “But I wish I had some clean clothes.”
“Here,” he said, “take this.” He pulled a T-shirt from his camera case, like a black rabbit from a hat. “I always carry an extra in case I need a change of clothes or to wrap up my equipment. Or share it.” He winked at her. “It’s clean.”
She jogged across the road, even though it was empty of traffic, and let herself into her room in a rush, relieved to be alone. The shower, too, was a relief. Washing away the clay dust and dried sweat from her skin, the oil from her hair, the night from between her legs. Holding her cast outside the shower curtain, she stood under the hottest water she could bear for far longer than the two-minute limit suggested by the admonishing little plaque on the wall.
Greg’s T-shirt carried an unfamiliar, if not unpleasant, scent—metallic with a hint of floral laundry soap. What did his apartment smell like? Did he cook his own meals, wash his own clothes? Putting on his shirt, letting her wet hair dampen the back, felt prematurely intimate. She still could remember the first time she’d spent an entire night with Ryan, a month after they’d first started dating, and how strange and wonderful it had been to use his shampoo and shaving lotion the next morning, to dry off with his towel, to sip coffee wearing his Golden State Warriors boxer shorts. More than their weeks of sexual intimacy, wearing his favorite underwear seemed to mark the beginning of their coupledom. Taking off a sexual partner’s clothes was more straightforward, like stripping off a layer from the armor of identity. Nudity could be neutral, even though people did reveal something of themselves at the skin level, evidence of things often beyond their control—here are my moles and freckles, here is where I’m ticklish, here are my scars. But people communicated a great deal more by how they chose to cover their nakedness, whether with their own clothes or that of others. Clara looked down at Greg’s T-shirt, which was too big, and realized that in wearing it a choice was being made.
She finished dressing, gathered her hair into a ponytail as best she could, and brushed her teeth. She practiced a smile in the mirror, but noticed that it didn’t reach as far up as her eyes. Sighing, she stepped out into the glaring sunlight and walked toward the restaurant, where Greg would be waiting.
A couple she’d already seen a few times, both of them wearing serious hats and vests and carrying tripods, waved to her as she passed. There seemed to be a camaraderie among visitors here in the desert, perhaps because in spite of the few pockets of civilization they were just barely removed from the threats of the elements, of isolation. On the walls of her hotel room, there were framed pages from books—Plant Ecology of Death Valley, Desert Recreation and Survival, Struck for Gold—that highlighted the place’s precariousness. Maybe being friendly was just another means of increasing your chances of making it out of Death Valley alive.
Her gaze was on the Grapevine Mountain Range as she approached the open-air courtyard; she was imagining the difficulties faced by the gold-rush pioneers who’d journeyed westward across it almost two hundred years before when she noticed someone standing near the front office. He was a hundred feet away, with his broad, unmistakable back to her and his hands shoved in his pockets. A restlessness in the bend of his body suggested that he wasn’t much interested in whatever he could see in the gift shop’s window, that he was just passing time, waiting for something. She knew he was waiting for her.
Tingling with recognition and relief, she broke into a run even before she realized it, sprinting across the desert compound as if toward a mirage. “Peter!” she called.
When he turned, she saw the mix of surprise and pleasure on his face and came to a stop against him, wrapping her arms around his sturdy midsection and pressing her cheek against his chest. He staggered a moment from the impact but recovered by taking her into an embrace that cocooned her from the outside world. Even in the apparently limitless desert, he occupied an impressive amount of space.
“Clara,” he said, his deep voice seeming to travel not from his mouth but from the depths of his insides, trembling from his heart directly into her ear, the rawness of it both warming and unnerving her until she recognized this moment as a mistake, that there was a reason they’d hardly touched each other since the night they’d spent together. She abruptly pulled away.
“What are you doing here? How’d you know where I was?”
He tensed at her release and returned to a more platonic stance, arms hanging empty at his sides. “I tried calling you but it kept going to voice mail. So I looked up where to stay in Death Valley to call you there, which wasn’t hard because there’s only two hotels in the whole park. But you weren’t registered at either one and that bothered me, you being out here all this time. Then I wondered where the hell you could be for days on end if you didn’t have a hotel room, so I just decided to come. I happened to try this place first, and I saw your car—”
“But we talked yesterday. I told you I was fine.”
“I know, but after we hung up I couldn’t stop thinking about how this just wasn’t like you, taking off like that without any real plan. You’ve been gone almost a week. I was worried about you. I thought about your car breaking down, or you having a flat, and with your hand and everything…” He tried to hide his embarrassment by quickly running his eyes over her to assess any possible damage. “How is it, your hand?”
She looked at it. The aspirins she’d taken earlier had helped, but it still ached. Her mind flashed to the fisticuffs with Greg, how she’d flung herself at him, knocking him over, and pounded him with her fists. Greg. She thought of the playa, the Scriabin, the sex, and was immediately ashamed. “It’s okay, I guess.”
“But are you all right, Clara?”
“Yeah, sure. I’m okay.”
“And everything’s okay with your piano? That was what you were worried about, right?” Peter shoved his hands into his pockets and hunched forward. “That’s why you stayed?” The hopefulness in his voice made her cringe. He looked directly at her, his eyes pleading and loyal. Unlike Greg, whose expression could be as opaque as the surface of a frozen lake, Peter’s betrayed everything inside him. It was almost unbearable seeing this display of emotion, this struggle with restraint. She lowered her gaze from his face to his chest and mimicked his posture by putting her hands—as much as she could with the cast—into her own front pockets. They did this whenever they got too close to touching. A handcuffing against some unspoken point of no return. She pushed her good hand deeper into her pocket and touched something she’d forgotten was there. Then she remembered: the condom wrapper. She turned away, unable to look at him at all.
“Is that why you’re still here?”
“Yes,” she said, finally. There was a trash receptacle a few feet away, and she thrust the evidence into it.
“How much longer are you going to stay?”
“I don’t know.”
“I could stay with you. I mean, if you
wanted some company.” He glanced around at the low, rustic hotel buildings and, across the street, the general store, the gas station, and the RV park and campground next to it that was full but as lifeless as a cemetery, with the campers lined up like headstones. “Seems like it would get pretty lonesome out here.”
Clara didn’t trust herself to speak. She thought again of when she’d first started seeing Ryan and had mentioned it to Peter, deliberately casual, while they were disassembling the alternator on a vintage Porsche 928. How his concentration had seemed to narrow as he’d marked the alternator’s case with a piece of chalk where it had split at the seam so he could put it back together correctly. How the slot screwdriver had slipped as he was trying to pry the case apart. “It’s not serious,” she’d told him. “It probably won’t last the weekend.” He hadn’t said anything, only nodded. When she’d told him a few months later that she was moving in with Ryan, Peter had helped her carry the boxes.
She closed her eyes, suddenly weary of her small life, and when she opened them Greg and the movers were approaching from across the lot. Greg said something to Juan, who nodded and went with Beto into the restaurant. She regarded Greg much as Peter probably might: his cool stare absorbing the scene, his awkward gait. Step, thump, step, thump, step, thump. A knot formed in her chest. She hadn’t had enough time to make sense of the situation with Greg in her own mind, much less justify it to Peter.
“Greetings and salutations,” Greg said, looking from Peter to her, clearly wondering who this guy was. Whether he was just another guest at the hotel, or a potential rival, or both. That Greg might be the jealous type did not surprise her.
“Peter, this is Greg, the photographer.” Clara turned. “Greg, this is my friend Peter.” She stood back, as if she’d just tossed a match onto gas-soaked kindling, and watched as they shook hands and appraised each other.
“The not-boyfriend friend?” Greg asked.
“The what?” Peter dropped his hand.
“Clara was talking to somebody on the phone a day or two ago, but was quick to say afterward that it was just a friend. Not a boyfriend. Right, Clara?” He winked at her. Peter looked at her, stricken, although certainly what Greg had said was true. No, it was the arrogance of his tone. Clara looked down.
“Right,” she said.
“Anyway, Peter, what brings you all the way here?” Greg said, like a host, forcing cordiality on an unwelcome guest. “Did you come to join our merry band of travelers? Come to lend a hand moving our piano?” Our piano.
“I came to make sure Clara was okay.”
“Oh, she’s more than okay. Isn’t that right?” He moved to stand behind her—step, thump—and wrapped his arms around her waist. He kissed her lightly on the neck and kept his eyes on Peter as he whispered in her ear, “Nice shirt.” Then he let her go and said, brightly, “Join us for lunch if you’d like, Peter. But we need to get moving if we’re going to get the sunset shot I’ve got in mind. The light changes fast out here.”
Nobody moved.
Greg leaned in and kissed Clara once more, quickly this time, on her cheek. “Up to you,” he said, though to which one of them she wasn’t sure. “I’ll meet you inside.”
They watched him limp up the sidewalk and the steps, then go into the restaurant.
Peter had gone rigid. “It’s not just the light that changes fast,” he said, so quietly she probably wouldn’t have heard it if she hadn’t been standing right next to him.
She sighed, but it did nothing to relieve the pressure. “It wasn’t what I was expecting when I drove out here.”
“No?”
“No, it sure wasn’t.”
Peter turned back to the gift-shop window and studied the display of rocks, crystals, Native American crafts, then rested his forehead against the glass. “Do you even like this guy?”
She sat down on the low wall bordering the covered walkway and kicked the pebbles on the concrete. She thought back over the past few days, trying to summarize the strange, accelerated evolution of her relationship with Greg. Even she found it difficult to understand how they’d gone from antagonists to lovers so quickly. Were they lovers? “I don’t know. I’m not sure. Maybe.”
“You could’ve at least mentioned your little tryst on the phone yesterday. It would’ve saved me the drive.”
“I didn’t ask you to come.”
He spun around to face her, the physical embodiment of a roar. “Damn it, Clara! Why do you do this? Why do you just go from one half-assed relationship to another? You know, all this time I’ve been trying to put together a pattern, but there isn’t one. You don’t even have a type. The only thing these assholes you end up with have in common is that you don’t really care about any of them. You’re the car, they’re the driver. You don’t even give a shit where they’re going. You just let them drive you around until they feel like parking somewhere, then you freak out and leave.” He shook his head and set his jaw as firmly as if he were trying to stifle a howl. “You know what your problem is? You don’t want to be alone but you don’t want a relationship that means anything. You’re too goddamn afraid of real intimacy. You’ll let someone have your body but not your heart. What a fucking waste.”
He’d never spoken to her like this, but that wasn’t what burned her cheeks and made her turn away; it was the shock and shame of knowing he was right.
“So is this guy any different, or just your next distraction?”
“Fuck you,” she said, her back still turned.
He opened his mouth to say something, closed it again. There was so little for them to hold on to out there, just little gasps of air.
The door to the restaurant swung open and Greg stuck his head into the sunlight. “Clara, please come on,” he called out. “You, too, Peter, if you’re staying. We’ll lose our shot if you don’t hurry up.”
She raised an index finger, and Greg lifted his chin once in response and watched her and Peter for a moment before disappearing back inside.
Clara turned back to Peter, who looked down at his feet. There was a sort of grief pulsating between them in the dry desert air that she had never felt before. A sense of finality that she forced herself to acknowledge. If she went off in this unanticipated direction with Greg, if they did end up together, maybe in New York, maybe somewhere else, it wouldn’t only mean leaving Bakersfield and her job at the garage. It would mean leaving Peter.
Would they stay in touch if she left? Would they ever see each other again? She imagined herself in a distant future, sorting through the mail in an apartment lobby or a foyer somewhere and finding a holiday card from Kappas Xpress Lube. Every November, Anna made everyone pose inside the open bay door for a photo, and had cards printed up—with their signatures—which she sent to all their customers, even ones who hadn’t been to the shop in years. In all the photos taken since Clara had started working there, Peter had made sure he was standing next to her. What would it be like to open a card next month or next year, or every year for the rest of her life, and see that empty place where she used to be?
“Greg’s a direct connection to my childhood,” she said. “I don’t expect you to understand, but—”
“Stop. Please.”
She took a sharp breath, blew it out slowly. Kicked a small rock. “Do you want to stay? For lunch, I mean?”
He shook his head without looking at her. “I don’t think so. I’m going to head on back.” The sadness in his voice was terrible. He straightened up, stretching his slumped shoulders until he reached his full, abundant height, then walked over to his car. He withdrew a bag from the trunk and handed it to her.
“I figured you didn’t have many clean clothes with you, so I brought you some. Pants and a couple shirts from the shop. There’s some cookies in there, too. My mom made them. Your favorites.”
She closed her eyes and nodded. “Thank you,” sh
e whispered.
“Take care of yourself, Clara.”
“I will.”
“Clara!” Greg was standing at the door again. “Come on!”
“I’m coming!” she shouted. Then to Peter: “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s your life. You have to do whatever’ll make you happy.” He turned to go and then stopped. “It’s a little embarrassing, though. Here I thought I was coming to rescue you from something and take you home.”
Home. The word echoed in her mind. Where was that, anyway? A promised land that existed on the periphery of her existence, something she’d felt denied of ever since her parents died. Or that maybe she’d been denying herself. For half her life, she’d sort of assumed without thinking too much about it that home was wherever she had her piano.
Before she could figure out something to say, Peter got into his car, turned on the ignition, and pulled away. Dirt whirled up, clouding the air between them, and by the time she lifted her hand to wave he was already out of sight.
THE PIANO FELT ITSELF being pushed up the rocky dirt footpath that cut across a jagged mountain summit. The wind blew, hard and bitter, seeping through the slivers of space above the plinth and under the key bed and into the recesses of its case, chilling its pinblock and hammer rail and bridge. Its soundboard, already so heavy with remembered tunes, suffered several thin cracks from the dryness, enough of them to have a musical consequence. The thick steel wires conducted the cold and strained at their pins, compromising their unison. The felt on the hammers compacted so densely that if someone were to play the piano then, the sound would be as harsh as the wind.