Melanie reached for her phone.
“Anything but Koffin,” Kris said.
“Why not Koffin?” Melanie asked.
“Because they’re shit,” Kris said, and then she couldn’t help herself, and it all came out in a rush. “Terry Hunt’s a rip-off Marilyn Manson, someone else writes his music and he never credits them, he uses fake outrage to distract from his weak subject matter, he doesn’t even play a goddamn instrument. His lyrics are sentimental bullshit, his sound mixes are sloppy, his bass lines are all ripped off from Trent Reznor, and I’ve never seen another musician do something great that he doesn’t steal a year later.”
The temperature lowered in the car.
“Okay,” Melanie said, “Because they’re my favorite band. I don’t know all that musical stuff you’re saying, but I like them because I got through some hard fucking times listening to their music, and I’ve got a lot of good fucking memories listening to their music and if you think you’re going to come into my car, when I’m giving you a ride, and tell me my favorite band sucks, then you’re an asshole. Don’t you listen to anyone but yourself? I’m going to their show! For two whole days! Maybe you shouldn’t shit all over something when someone giving you a ride tells you they’re their favorite band.”
It felt so absurd, so ridiculous to be yelled at over not liking Koffin that Kris didn’t know how to react. She was selfish. She’d made JD come with her and he died. She went to see Scottie Rocket and he died. She was cursed.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“No,” Melanie said. “Fuck that. I’m sorry, but at the next exit I’m pulling over and you’re getting out.”
“Okay,” Kris said.
A green sign for an exit to Crownpoint flashed past and Melanie started slowing down.
“I never should have picked you up in the first place,” Melanie said, half to herself but so angry she didn’t care if Kris heard. “Trying to help someone and getting it thrown back in my face.”
The exit was one mile ahead on the right. As Melanie got in the lane she needed, Kris said, “Before you let me out, I want to say I’m sorry. Really. You like the music you like. I’m just being a bitter asshole.”
Melanie put on her turn signal.
“I’m having a bad day,” Kris said. “And I’m sorry. But don’t let me make you not want to help someone else next time, okay? You had good instincts. I’m just having a hard time getting out of my own head.”
Melanie sighed and turned off the turn signal, pressed the accelerator.
“I’m not going to put you out,” she said. “For all I know, your ex’ll pick you up and then I’ll feel guilty you got murdered. Come on, we’re five hours to Vegas. Just don’t work my nerve.”
“You don’t have to do this,” Kris said.
“Thank you would be fine, actually,” Melanie said.
“Thank you,” Kris said.
“Now find something to play,” Melanie said.
Kris went through Melanie’s music library on her phone, looking for something they could agree on. It was no to Fugazi (“I was into them when I was vegan for five minutes,” Melanie said), no to Bon Jovi (“Those posers had a business manager before they even recorded an album,” Kris said), no to Beck (“I can’t listen to him after I found out he was a Scientologist,” Melanie said), no to Black Sabbath (“I’ve heard enough Sabbath to last me a lifetime,” Kris said), no to Green Day (Melanie: “Maybe if I was twelve”), no to Beyoncé (Kris: “Something without auto-tune, please”), no to Sonic Youth (Melanie: “That’s my boyfriend’s music. You know what? Delete that”), no to Manowar (Kris: “I need something that’s not jock rock”), no to Blink-182 (Melanie: “What’s that even doing on there?”), no to Springsteen (Kris & Melanie: “No!”), no to Radiohead, no to Metallica, no to Taylor Swift, no to Linkin Park.
Finally, Kris said, “Okay, what about this?”
There was a brief moment of Ladysmith Black Mambazo crooning from the speakers, then an upbeat guitar picking out a happy riff, and Dolly Parton’s voice rolled out of the speakers singing about how she’s been happy lately, thinking about all the good things to come.
“Oh my god,” Melanie said. “Peace Train!”
“This is without a doubt the best version of this song,” Kris said, sitting back in her seat.
“Cat Stevens bites,” Melanie agreed.
Melanie juked her head along to the music, caught up in Dolly Parton’s voice that sounded like she was singing through a smile. Kris looked out her window at the passing brown desert, and started nodding along. As the song trailed off into its hushed ending there was a brief silence, followed by the urgent cut time strumming of “Jolene,” and first Melanie and then Kris were singing along with Dolly, begging Jolene not to take their man.
When it was over, Melanie insisted she put on “I Will Always Love You.”
“It’s a crime that everyone associates this song with Whitney Houston,” Melanie said. “Did you know Dolly wrote this to say goodbye when she left her business manager? God, when she sings this to Burt Reynolds in Best Little Whorehouse in Texas…”
“Dolly Parton is a genius,” Kris said.
They listened while the music stopped in the middle of the song and Dolly talked directly to her business manager, wishing him joy and happiness, but more than anything wishing him love.
“Have you ever heard ‘I’ll Oil Wells Love You’?” Melanie asked.
“No?” Kris said.
“Yeah,” Melanie said. “It’s from her second album, and it’s not making fun. She wrote it with her uncle years before she wrote ‘I Will Always Love You.’ It’s about a woman who wants to marry a rich oil millionaire from Texas.”
“Man,” Kris said. “You’re like a superfan.”
“Growing up, I thought Dolly Parton was Santa Claus,” Melanie said.
“What?” Kris asked, and then she surprised herself by doing something she never thought she’d do again. She laughed.
“Seriously,” Melanie said as “Coat of Many Colors” came on. “My parents enrolled me in that Imagination Library program she does, where she mails kids a free book every month until you’re five. I used to go crazy when the books came. My mom told me I’d run around and shout my head off about how my friend Dolly had sent me another book. And when I was thinking about Christmas I figured, well Santa probably wasn’t real because no one has a job where they only have to work one day a year, but Dolly sent me a book every month, so she must be the one sending me all my gifts at Christmas. So yeah, I thought she was Santa.”
“I was Dolly Parton for Halloween, like, three times when I was little,” Kris said. “I saw her on Hee Haw for the first time when I was five or six and just lost my mind.”
After that, the ride was easy. Late in the day, they passed Flagstaff, and the land got flat and covered with green scrub. When Melanie slowed down and took the exit, Kris went on high alert.
“Where’re you going?” she asked, as they rolled off the highway, braking hard for the first time in a couple hundred miles.
In her mind she saw the cars flooding into the rest stop, the hands banging on the windows.
“I’m hungry,” Melanie said, putting on her turn signal and pulling into an enormous Walmart parking lot. “I like eating here because it’s safe.”
She parked at the far end of the lot, where the solid mass of car roofs reflecting the dazzling desert sun broke up, scattered, turned into Winnebagos and RVs parked a respectful distance from each other. Some people sat at folding tables and ate, kids running around them. Others sat in lawn chairs.
This is fine, Kris said to herself. There’s no problem. But she clutched the door handle so hard her hand cramped. Melanie yanked the emergency brake.
“Come on,” she said. “Get what you want out of the drink cooler.”
She spread a
big striped beach towel in the shadow of the Subaru, and opened the cooler. Kris looked in. It had Ziploc freezer bags in it all labeled and dated. Melanie hunted and then pulled one out, then another, and set them up on the asphalt with paper plates, a little plastic bag for garbage, some grapes, some barbecue potato chips, and a Diet Coke for each of them. She tore a weird-looking bun in two and handed half to Kris.
“I hope you’re not a vegetarian,” she said.
“What is it?” Kris asked.
“Pepperoni roll,” Melanie said.
It was delicious. They leaned against the warm car as the sun went down behind Walmart, turning the horizon orange and purple. They left the windows down so they could still hear Dolly.
“See him?” Melanie said, picking up the conversational slack. “That guy over there?”
Kris followed Melanie’s gesture to an impossibly skinny husband and wife in their twenties. He followed his wife around, gesturing with his hands, mouth moving nonstop, as she cleaned out the garbage from their car.
“Newlyweds,” Melanie said. “See how she keeps stopping to fidget with her wedding ring? And he’s actually wearing a “My Favorite Disney Villain is my Wife” T-shirt. I bet her honeymoon consisted of him explaining what music she needs to listen to and how everything she wants to do is lame.”
Kris could believe it.
“And him,” Melanie said, pointing to a man on a lawn chair. “Sitting alone, staring straight ahead, not even eating. He’s going to Vegas for one last binge before he kills himself because he’s so lonely. I bet the only time people ever talk to him is when they ask if he’s saving that seat next to him at the movies.”
“You’ve got a good eye for details,” Kris said.
“I just like to watch people,” Melanie said.
“Do me,” Kris said.
Melanie gave her a side eye, checking Kris out.
“You bought those clothes at a gas station, I bet,” she said. “And that bandana is from a friend. Someone you miss. The guy who you had a fight with isn’t your husband.”
Kris stopped breathing.
“No wedding ring,” Melanie said.
“I threw it away,” Kris said.
“Not even an indentation on your finger,” Melanie said. “Also, I don’t think you had a fight with your husband, or boyfriend, or whoever it is. No wallet, no bag, what kind of man throws a woman out of his car without her bag? Either a real mean one, or one who doesn’t exist.”
Kris didn’t know what to say. Finally, she decided on honesty.
“I’m going to Vegas to settle an old score with someone,” she said. “It’s a man, but not my husband.”
“Always a mistake,” Melanie said. “Trust me. I know.”
Behind them, Dolly Parton began to sing “Little Sparrow.”
“I need to look him in the eyes,” Kris said. “Ask him why he caused so much pain. Why he hurt so many people.”
A satellite blinked past overhead, a mechanical falling star.
“Any answer you get won’t be good enough,” Melanie said. “Twisted people do twisted things. That’s all. They’re more shallow than you think. I’m with Dolly.”
“All ye maidens heed my warning,” Dolly sang behind them, “Never trust the hearts of men / They will crush you like a sparrow / Leaving you to never mend.”
“Dolly always knows,” Kris agreed.
Kris couldn’t remember the last time she had a conversation with a woman who wasn’t her mother or a Best Western guest. The two of them sat for a while, listening as the music changed to “Eagle When She Flies,” then “9 to 5.” Eventually they got back on the road, talking in the darkness from time to time, listening to Dolly Parton’s complete discography.
Identical condos started clinging to both sides of the highway, strung with identical plastic “Now Leasing” banners. Billboards got more aggressive (IN A WRECK? NEED A CHECK? MAKE HIM PAY! SUEMYBOSS.COM!), and suddenly they were in Vegas. A black pyramid glowed on the horizon. The skyline got crowded with massive gold and silver slabs, the Eiffel Tower, the Stratosphere Tower, a cheapjack roller coaster on top of a hotel.
Kris had always thought of Las Vegas as a whore’s corpse, covered in glitter and left in the desert to rot, but even that didn’t do justice to the Strip. Frat boys carrying plastic yard-long margaritas got in a fist fight with a guy dressed as Batman at an intersection. Drunk parents pushed sleeping kids in strollers across the street, screaming at each other about money, while half-naked women wearing police caps and fishnet stockings posed next to puffy-faced fathers with their hats on backward.
Hookers for Jesus in pink-and-black T-shirts gave a street-corner sermon, while card slappers slapped hooker cards into the hands of ironic bearded hipsters wearing bunny ears and tutus over their cargo shorts. Chinese tourists posed next to a truck stalled in traffic towing a sign that read “Loosest Slots & Sluts in Town.” Bored guys with leathery faces handed out bottles of hand sanitizer while wearing green T-shirts that read, “Girls Direct to Your Room in 20 Minutes.”
“Where can I drop you?” Melanie asked.
“I’ll just get out wherever and call my sister to pick me up,” Kris said.
“I’ll drive you,” Melanie said.
“It’s fine,” Kris said, letting her know by the firmness of her voice that the subject was closed.
Melanie pulled up in front of a gleaming white castle with red and blue turrets rising into the sky.
“I know it’s cheesy,” she said, “but they had a deal for really cheap rooms, so why not? How often am I ever going to get to stay in a castle?”
They got out and Melanie waved to the valet parker who was absorbed in his phone.
“Well.” Kris paused, on the other side of the car. “Thanks. You sure I can’t pay you back?”
“Go,” Melanie said. “You did me a favor. It was less boring with you in the car. Good luck.”
“With what?” Kris asked, distracted, thinking of where she could find a place to sleep and how she could get out to the Hellstock ’19 campground undetected. Maybe she could dress up like a cleaning lady. No one ever noticed maids. Did they have maids out in the middle of the desert?
“Your thing with this guy,” Melanie said. “Looking into his eyes. I hope it goes okay, but you’re better off without him.”
“Thanks,” Kris said, and walked away.
She almost didn’t hear Melanie running after her.
“Deidre,” Melanie said.
Kris turned around.
“How much money do you have in your wallet?” Melanie asked. “Honestly.”
The two women looked at each other and Kris made up her mind.
“Nine dollars,” she said.
“Come on. You’re staying with me.”
JACK BLAST: …an atmosphere I can only describe as evil. These so-called Koffin Kids, what I call anarcho-radicalists with a globalist agenda, have jammed every room in Las Vegas and Green Valley for their occult ritual this weekend, and I call it occult because that’s what Terry Hunt, its organizer, calls it. These aren’t children, they have a history of violence, of murder, of wanton destruction of private property. Let’s call them what they are: foot soldiers in the One World Government here in Nevada to spread terror.
—WJET, “Radio Free America”
September 7, 2019
ris woke up from a nightmare of JD’s thick, wet screams to Melanie blowing in her ear. She jerked up with a start, skull exploding with fear, eyes rolling wild as she looked around the dark room, not knowing where she was.
“Relax, it’s me,” Melanie said, squatting next to Kris’s bed.
She was fully clothed and the bathroom light was on. Kris had the impression that Melanie had been up for hours. The girl put a plastic shopping bag on the end of Kris’s bed.
“I thought
you might want some clean clothes,” she said.
Kris opened the bag and found a “What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas” T-shirt, and a pair of stonewashed jean shorts with “Juicy” appliquéd on the butt in sequins.
Kris closed the bag and handed it back to Melanie.
“I can’t pay you,” she said.
Melanie pushed the bag back at Kris.
“It’s my last good deed before I spend two days partying,” she said.
Kris sat up in bed, body stiff, back aching, skull throbbing, and looked at the white plastic shopping bag.
“Why are you being so nice to me?” she asked.
Melanie stood up and began doing yoga poses.
“Buy me breakfast,” she said. “They’ve got a $3.99 special downstairs for guests. You can meet the guy I’m going out to Hellstock with. If your radar goes off, I won’t go with him. I just need you to give me a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.”
Even at nine in the morning the streets were baking. Through the window of the hotel diner, Kris saw emergency vehicles shimmering in the heat haze rising up from the street. Someone had slammed their red Honda Accord into the fence around New York-New York Casino, killing themself and some pedestrians the night before. Two metalheads in Blind King corpse paint handed out thumb drives with their band’s demo on it to the crowd of rubberneckers shooting the crashed car on their phones.
The waitress who led them to their table had blood encrusted around one nostril and a scabbed-over earlobe where someone must have torn out her earring. The local news blasting from the corner-mounted TV told them that police were still looking for a naked clown who tried to set the Little White Wedding Chapel on fire.
“Everything looks worse in the morning,” Melanie said.
Something thumped against the plate-glass window hard. They looked up to see a guy in an MMA “Fight Everyone” T-shirt slamming one of the metalheads against the glass. A cop got involved. The MMA guy took a swing and then there were five cops on top of him, pepper-spraying him in the eyes.
“Wow,” Melanie said.
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