by C. E. Murphy
A minute later I was on my back under the engine, tinkering with hot metal and inhaling the scent of gasoline and oil. Somewhat belatedly I realized I wasn’t wearing grubby clothes, and performed a shrug against the warm concrete I lay on. Yet another shirt and jeans relegated to the mechanic pile. I was going to have to go shopping soon.
A vague prickle of guilt set in as I fiddled with bolts. It wasn’t Petite that needed work. It was me. My head was spinning. I rarely got drunk. I never brought guys home, even if I had not, at least, actually slept with the one in question. I certainly didn’t find myself calling the guy back and agreeing to go out on a date. Well, I wouldn’t have thought I did, anyway. It’d never happened before, so apparently it was what I’d do in that situation. It still didn’t seem like me. I was by nature a much more isolated person than that.
I’d grown up on the road, my father unwilling to settle down for more than a few months. The one time he’d stayed anywhere over a year, a one-night stand he’d had showed up again and dumped a kid on him before flying back to Ireland without so much as an explanation. I’d had a pretty clear idea from a very early age what he was trying to leave behind.
Me.
My earliest memories were of mashing my nose against the car window, watching other vehicles whip by and calling “Zoom! Zoom!” at them. I loved the leather seats and the tangy scent of old cigarettes, the way the world skimmed by effortlessly and the thrum of power that shook the car as we took interstates and blue roads, always exploring. Dad taught me to read and how to fix cars, the two of us pulled off the road, me holding a flashlight while he bent his dark head over the engine. I got most of my primary school education that way, visiting historical sites and reading books about what had happened there. The one time I remember Dad having any real emotional response to one of those history lessons was at the Battle of Little Bighorn. He never before or after made much comment about it, maybe because although he was as pureblood Indian as you could get, I was only a half blood, but there was a serious under-current of stupid white men to that particular lesson. The truth is, I’d think anybody who stood there and looked out over the battlefield lands would think stupid white men, because even I could tell that no one in his right mind would get in a fight there. But that wasn’t really the point, and after that, Dad started teaching me Cherokee. I didn’t remember much of it anymore, but there’d been a while when I was seven or eight when it was almost all we spoke.
That was also when we started stopping in small towns for up to a semester at a time, so I could get some proper education. Dad never really understood that I was badly socialized, having only had him for company, or that a white girl—because despite the tan I currently had, my coloring was my mother’s: pale skin, green eyes and black hair—who spoke an Indian language wasn’t going to fit in. He never had much idea that grades were at different levels all over the country, or that several weeks to a semester was only long enough for me to always be the new kid, not to belong. The older I got, the more I resented it, until I was old enough to enter high school and put my foot down. I told Dad he had to choose a place for us to stay for my whole high school career.
It was like he’d never seen me before. Behind all the years of resentment I had this feeling that at least it was always me and Dad against the world, but the way he looked at me was more like it’d been him on the road alone all that time, and suddenly this young woman had appeared to make demands of him. We went back to North Carolina, where he’d grown up and I’d never been. I spent my high school years in the Eastern Cherokee Nation, fitting in just as poorly as I ever had. Those were the borders I tended to define myself by. When I stretched outside of them, like I’d done with Mark, I found myself turning to the one thing I really knew I could rely on.
Cars. They were my home, my first memories, my comfort foods and smells, and they could take me away from all the things that were wrong with the world. When the going got tough, the tough went shopping, but I went to work on my car.
Concrete and asphalt, even sun-warmed, wasn’t exactly the most comfortable bed I’d ever lain on, but it was enough to have me yawning until my eyes watered within half an hour of starting to tinker on Petite’s undercarriage. A distant jangle sounded right next to my ear, the wrench sliding from sleepy fingers, but I couldn’t convince my hand to grope around for it. Eh, it didn’t matter. Nobody was likely to come along and nick my stuff while I was lying right next to it. It wasn’t as if I was actually going to take a nap in the parking lot, even if I did feel a bit stretched thin and gooey, like the asphalt was folding itself around me, one big comfy bed.
The sky was the wrong shade of blue. It was a color I knew, hard and pure and unrelenting, but it wasn’t the color I was used to. I squinted against it, tracking the sun from the corner of my eye. It, too, was without remorse or gentleness, heat intense enough to redden my skin just from a few minutes’ exposure. Weight pressed down on me, both in the dryness of the air and in the inescapable sense that this was one of the more important moments of my life.
Someone put a hand on my shoulder, hotter and drier than the air. I turned to look up—unusual; I wasn’t used to looking up at much of anybody—and the scene changed around me.
Hot air became muggy, so full of water I choked on my first breath, tears suddenly blurring my vision. Heat vastly more intense than the air outside radiated at me, a fire built up in the center of a compact mudroom. I was one of four in the room, the other three sitting at cardinal points around the fire. I knelt, blinking against the heat, my hands on my thighs, and felt long hair sticking to my shoulders and back. I had never worn my hair long. My father had, but neither he nor I were patient enough to deal with a child’s tangles, and the unfamiliar feeling sent a shudder up my spine. I was not me, but I didn’t know who I was. Usually in dreams even when I was someone else, I thought I was me; now I felt like the butterfly wondering if he was a man, or maybe the other way around.
I tried to look down, but my head wouldn’t respond to my command, neck remaining stiff and my gaze direct and hot on the overwhelming fire. My heart knocked around inside me with a child’s excitement that I tried to quell: it wasn’t appropriate, no more than the grin that kept wanting to stretch across my face. I needed to be solemn and adult for this, the itchy idea that it would be taken away otherwise skittering over my skin. I knew that wouldn’t happen, but I still struggled to be serious about it all. That was what everyone expected, and I didn’t want to disappoint them.
Time compressed and ballooned, stretching me across it like taffy until I felt barely attached to my body, a heady swimming sensation that made nausea float in my belly. Voices sang in the background, drums thudding with resolute direction. Sometimes I joined in, singing words I didn’t know in a language I didn’t recognize. Mostly, though, I let the songs and the heat and the drums sink into my skin, and pull me farther and farther away from my body. That was the purpose: I was there to be guided. Later I would become more active in these rituals, but for now I was the student.
A part of me, far beneath the music and the taffy feeling, said, so this is how it should have been, but that didn’t make much sense to me as I snapped apart from my body and drifted into a place of absolute quiet blackness.
Oddly enough, I knew where I was. It wasn’t the Dead Zone, the starless place between life and death and other worlds, though how I could tell the difference between one utter darkness and another, I wasn’t sure. Sparks of life floated through this place, like invisible motes reflected from inside my eyes. I drifted for what felt like a long time, watching them, aware that somewhere behind the bones of my ears, I could still hear the drums beating.
I couldn’t remember being so relaxed. The darkness was warm, unlike in the Dead Zone, where it had weight and purpose and chill, even when it wasn’t being visited by deadly snake-gods. I could rest here forever, warm and content and safe.
One of the floaties popped into something brighter and more solid, making me ch
uckle. Last time I’d seen these things, a whole host of them had come tumbling out of the black to rassle for dominance over one another. This time only one creature came, that quick burst of light seeming distant and hopeful. It was a coyote, I could see that, more ethereal than my Coyote and much more playful than the Big Coyote I’d met in the desert. It disappeared, leaving me resting in darkness again, then leaped forward, suddenly far closer.
The fourth time it reappeared, it did so directly in front of me, and looked up with a loll-tongued grin before butting its head against my thigh so hard I felt the ache all the way to the bone. I offered my hand, grinning back at the spirit animal, and it wrapped its long tongue around my wrist, then without warning or pain, began chowing down on my arm.
Surprise ricocheted through me, more out of familiarity and unexpectedness than fear or anger, and I gaped down at the spirit coyote’s silver fur and see-through lines as it worked on swallowing me whole. I’d been through this before, though I realized quite suddenly that the person I was in my dream hadn’t been. That part of me knew to expect this, but still felt more than a little horror and panic at being had for lunch. I had the peculiar sensation of trying to reassure myself that everything would be okay, and the even more peculiar sensation of not getting through to myself. After a few seconds I realized that for the other part of me, having Coyote eat me hurt, and I remembered that being the thunderbird’s snack hadn’t been a bowl of cherries, either. I was trying to figure out how to get past the pain and offer new reassurances when something nudged my ankle.
I peeled my arm away from my eyes, blinking blearily at legs visible up to slacks-clad knees. The knees bent into a crouch, hands dangling over them as Mark peered down the length of Petite’s undercarriage to grin at me. “This your idea of a fancy date, Joanne?”
Tuesday, July 5, 7:53 p.m.
I crunched up several inches, then crashed back down again, having narrowly avoided smashing my head on Petite’s engine. “Ma—uh? What’re you—what time is it? Jesus!” I flinched up a second time, again just barely missing bashing my head, and rolled to the side, getting out from beneath my car before I did myself serious injury. “Did I fall asleep out here?”
“It’s ten to eight,” Mark said. “I’m early. Sorry.” He stayed in his crouch, still grinning at me while I scrambled to my feet and pushed oily hands through my hair, then swore and rubbed them on my jeans. “Looks like you’re not quite ready.”
I stared at him wide-eyed, then turned to stare at my Mustang. Concrete wasn’t my favorite place to sleep, but concrete beneath a jacked-up vehicle was just asking to get dead. I couldn’t place the blame on Petite, but somehow I wanted to, as if she’d lulled me into a potentially deadly nap. “It’s eight o’clock?” The location of the sun and the coloring of the sky suggested Mark was not, in fact, lying to me. “Uh. Jesus.” I was never at my best right after I’d woken up, but waking up after an all-day snooze in a parking lot was high on a list of Ways to Discombobulate Joanne. I was astonished no one’d called the police or dropped the car on me or stolen my tools. I swung back around to stare at Mark some more, as if doing so would provide some sort of explanation for my behavior.
“You okay?” He looked up at me with the amusement still there, but dampened by genuine concern. “How long’ve you been out here?”
“Since…like, God, noon. Somewhere like that.” I pushed my hand through my hair again, then rubbed the scar on my cheek and felt grease slick across my face. Mark put his hands on his thighs and pushed out of his crouch, grinning again. He wore a maroon button-down that played up the red in his hair and looked soft. I curled my fingers against my face to keep myself from smearing oil all over his clothes, too, and transferred my attention to taking tools out from under my car so I could remove the jack. That was safer than feeling up Mark’s shirt.
“I came home to do some work on the car and to think, and…” My heart had started hammering too hard, making a wash of fright climb up my throat. I could believe I might fall asleep under Petite for a few minutes, maybe even an hour or two. But with the sun traveling through the sky and heating up both the day and the car, not to mention leaking light around the mask my elbow’d made, and with people in and out of the parking lot all day—that just wasn’t normal. I knotted my hands around the jack and held on, trusting it to not give out and crush me now when it hadn’t bothered to all day. “I can’t believe I slept out here.” My thoughts were still running down those tracks, wash, rinse, repeat. “That hard, all day. It’s not…”
“Natural?” There wasn’t any teasing in Mark’s voice, though he sounded wry. I looked up from the jack, then ratcheted it down, mouth pressed thin. “It’ll be okay,” he said, sounding a great deal like I had trying to reassure myself within the context of my dream. “Look. I’ve got reservations for eight-thirty at the Ponti Seafood Grill. You’re going to need some food, and I know you don’t have anything in your apartment.” I heard a smile come into his voice and looked up to see it reflected on his face. “I’m guessing you’re not the kind of woman who takes two hours to primp and get ready to go out. Why don’t we go up to your apartment, you can clean up and we can go to dinner? I won’t keep you long, I swear, but you’re going to have to eat one way or another, right?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose. “I don’t have anything to wear to Ponti’s.” Not that there was much dress code anywhere in Seattle—casual wear, hallmark of the Northwest, was accepted anywhere I ever ate—but Mark looked nice, and I didn’t have anything between jeans and sweaters and my dress uniform.
A car door banged shut somewhere in the parking lot and Phoebe’s voice sailed toward me: “Are you avoiding me, Joanne? You didn’t answer your pho—ooh. Hello.” The last, I guessed, wasn’t directed at me, as she appeared from down the lot and looked Mark up and down. “Hi. I’m Phoebe.” She offered a hand, seizing Mark’s forearm in a traditional warrior’s grip when he took it. Her expression was delicious, trying to watch both of us at once. “What’s up, Joanne?”
I opened my mouth and shut it again. I had managed to double-book the single evening I’d had plans for in months. “Uh. I, uh.”
“You have a date,” Phoebe surmised, laughter glinting in her eyes. “Is that why you said you couldn’t go out tonight? You’re not going out in that, are you?” She eyed my jeans and T-shirt with dismay, which didn’t seem fair. I’d barely gotten them grease-stained.
“I, uh.”
Phoebe turned a very bright grin on Mark and grabbed my upper arm as solidly as she’d taken Mark’s. “Twenty minutes,” she said. “Give me twenty minutes and you won’t recognize her. Joanne, come with me.”
“I, uh,” I managed one more time, and Phoebe dragged me off to my apartment.
CHAPTER 8
“Start talking,” she hissed as soon as we were inside the building door, though it didn’t stop her from pulling me up the stairs. “Who is he? Why didn’t you say something? He’s really cute, Joanne! What were you doing working on your car if you’ve got a date? What were you doing working on your car if you were supposed to go out with me? My God, it’s a good thing I came along. You’d have just worn that, wouldn’t you?” The barrage of questions and comments got us up five flights of stairs and into my apartment, where Phoebe let me go and flung her giant black purse onto my couch. “Talk,” she repeated. “I want the dirt! No, wait. Go get in the shower.” She shed her denim jacket as she spoke, revealing worn hip-hugging jeans and a black sleeveless spandex shirt that said “Hottie” in rhinestones across her breasts.
“I’m in over my head, aren’t I?” That was easier than trying to answer any of her zillions of questions.
“You dress fine for slouching off to Bethlehem.” Phoebe knocked the front door closed with a toe and leaned on the couch, arms folded. “But for dating you have less dress sense than my dog. Of course you’re in over your head. Shower.” She pointed imperiously at my bedroom. “Never fear. Phoebe is here. I’ll turn you into a heartb
reaker.”
“I don’t want to be a heartbreaker,” I said somewhat dizzily, and went to take a shower. Somebody was in control, even if it wasn’t me. For the moment I just went with it. My brain didn’t seem to have quite woken up yet.
Four minutes of hot water later I felt slightly less fuzzy. The best thing about hair as short as I wore mine was the absolute minimal time frame it took to wash it. Phoebe was in my bedroom when I exited the bathroom wrapped in a towel, her hands on her hips and her expression dismayed as she studied my closet. “I was right,” she said dourly. I stuck my jaw out defensively.
“Right about what?”
Phoebe turned on me, thick eyebrows lifted. She very nearly had an eyebrow, rather than eyebrows. It kind of went along with the compact, muscular build she’d gotten from years of fencing. In car terms, she was a Porsche: small, sleek, fast and powerful. In people terms, I was afraid to mention a pair of tweezers in her presence, for fear she’d kick my ass. “You have nothing at all to wear. It’s okay.” She’d moved her purse to my bed, and now she upended its contents onto the comforter. A glimmering gold thing fell out, then a pair of jeans and a tri-fold leather wallet that had taken a lot of beating. A compact bag fell on top of all of it. Phoebe pushed the wallet into her back pocket and shook the jeans out. “Put these on.”
I clutched my towel and squinted at the jeans. There was something wrong with them. “Are those yours? They’re short.”
“No, they’re not. Either. Not mine and not short. Put them on.” She thrust them at me. I edged by her and got some undies out of my dresser first, squirming into them before taking the jeans. I had the distinct impression I was being bulldozed and I’d somehow given tacit permission for that to happen. “What’s the gold thing?”
“Get the jeans on first.”
“I’m trying. They don’t fit. They’re too short.”
Phoebe inspected my ankles. The jeans hit right where they were supposed to, boot-cut and swinging against my anklebones. “They are not.”