It was years ago, but I hear her voice so clearly, can remember exactly how she said it. I repeat it to her now: “Let’s go the second that we’re free?” And the truth is so terrible that I have to laugh. “I get it now,” I tell her. “I thought you wanted us to do something great. Together. But really you just wanted to run away.”
She starts to respond but I don’t want to hear her, so I grab my wallet, unlock the door, and head to the motel office. I ring the little bell on the counter over and over until Melvin stumbles out of the back.
“Something wrong with the room?”
“No. I just need another one.”
He grumbles something incoherent and takes my credit card.
A few minutes later, I’m letting myself into a new room. It smells like cigarettes and stale perfume, but it’s quiet and it’s a corridor away from her. The lamp on the table flickers and buzzes when I switch it on, but eventually it casts light over a grimy carpet and a stained green bedspread. I switch it off again.
I pull down the bedspread and collapse onto the sheets. I lie there for a long time, wishing I could call someone at home. I consider trying Uncle Pete. But what if he’s finally drifted off after hours of infomercials and magazine perusal? All I know is that I don’t want to give anyone a heart attack by calling at 2:00 A.M. I close my eyes, and then I remember my mother.
It is eleven in the morning in Paris, and she answers with a singsong “Bonjour!”
“Hey, Ma.”
“Colby, mon chéri! Ça fait tellement plaisir d’entendre ta voix, mon petit aventurier.”
“Ma,” I say. “It’s the middle of the night. Can we speak English? Please?”
“Bien sûr, honey,” she says. “Of course. I might be a little rusty, though. I speak French all the time now. Two nights ago, I even dreamed in French.”
“What was the dream about?” I ask, but I don’t really care about the dream. I just want to hear her voice.
“I was walking along the Seine, like I do every day, and I looked up and all of my favorite French words were drifting across the sky on kites.”
“That sounds beautiful.”
“Oh, it was. It was so beautiful. I can’t wait to show you everything.”
Just then I hear knocking. I stand up and drag the phone with me to the door. My mother is telling me about the park a block away from her apartment, about the different trees and the vines that climb the wrought-iron gates, and I peer through the peephole to find Bev, rubbing her arms for warmth, small and distorted through the fish-eye glass.
“Hey, Ma?” I say. “I’m sorry. I gotta go now. But it sounds really amazing. I really can’t wait to see you.”
“Okay, mon chére. Bonne nuit.”
I open the door as wide as the chain lock will allow, which is not wide at all.
“Hey,” Bev says.
“Hey,” I say.
“Let me in,” she says. “I need to talk to you.”
I shut the door. Lean my forehead against the cracked paint. Slide the chain free.
Let her in.
But she doesn’t talk.
Instead, she locks the door behind her, turns around, and touches my face. Anger dissipates, gratitude rushes over me. I want to say thank you but then her mouth is on mine.
I’m not thinking about the redhead or the guy from Fort Bragg or any of the others. I’m not thinking about the way that she’s lied to me. Maybe those were just moments meant to lead to this one. To touching the skin of Bev’s back beneath her bra clasp, to the clasp unfastening, to the place on her rib cage where my hand rests for a moment as we kiss deeper.
And, okay, the reason I’ve never had sex is not a mystery to me. It isn’t that I haven’t wanted to, it’s just that I’ve been waiting for this:
For Bev to bury her fingers in my hair and pull my face to hers. To kiss her this way: not too hard, but not gently.
Bev takes a step back and lifts her shirt over her head. She lets her bra slip off her shoulders. And even though I’ve imagined her like this a million times, she is so beautiful my chest aches. Not only my heart, but muscles and tendons and bones, even the air in my lungs. Everything hurts but I would hurt this way forever if we could just stay. Bev and me in this dimly lit room in this shitty motel in a town that lies between better destinations. Bev unzipping my jeans and unzipping her own. Bev in nothing but blue-green underwear, and then in nothing at all.
I pull the comforter off the bed. The sheets smell like bleach. A small foil square has appeared in Bev’s hand, something I didn’t have because I wasn’t prepared for this, and she kisses my neck with lips that are softer than I could have imagined in a million more fantasies of her. Before she turns out the light, she looks into my face, eyes clear the way they were when we were years younger and she had nothing to keep from me. Not for long but for long enough that I understand this is what was supposed to happen all this time. It was always supposed to be me and Bev.
Like this.
Together.
Wednesday
The sheets are cooler than they should be. When I open my eyes, I see Bev smoking at the foot of the bed, in my white T-shirt and her underwear.
I sit up, reaching for her.
“Good morning,” I say, and when I think of her last night, moving above me, it’s as if we’re floating for a moment, weightless, alone in a place where gravity doesn’t apply.
She sucks in. Exhales a cloud of smoke. She doesn’t turn around, and I plunge back to earth. There is a tightening in my stomach, a message there: something has changed.
“Was last night what you wanted?” she asks.
Her smoke hovers in the air between us.
“Yeah,” I say. “I mean, it was part of it.”
She stands, her back to me. A girl in a dingy motel room, almost naked with sunlight glinting above shabby curtains.
She checks the watch I gave her. “We need to leave,” she says.
“Bev,” I say.
“What?”
Then I say, “Beverly.”
All three syllables.
It is only her name but what I mean is, Come back to me.
Still facing away, she opens the curtains and lets in light. She is surrounded by brightness. Her hip bones, her long legs. The outline of her back and shoulders through the thin white cotton.
I try again: “Beverly.”
Come back as the girl I used to know, the one who did math problems in her head and laughed hard and rode her bike faster than anyone.
She turns and stubs her cigarette on the bedside tabletop, already scarred by dozens of cigarettes. She pulls my shirt over her head and stands in front of me, and even though only a few hours ago I wanted to thank her, now I look away. She might as well be wearing a coat of armor. My shirt lands by my foot.
“Five minutes, okay?” she says, and then she disappears into the bathroom.
Everyone’s quiet in the van. Meg was in the driver’s seat when I got out there, but I told her I felt like driving so she moved to the back. Bev was ready a few minutes before I was, and I don’t know what she told them. It could have been everything. It could have been nothing. I don’t know.
Yesterday’s forests have given way to a straight, wide expanse of highway. No shade, no wildflowers, just concrete and hot sun and the occasional billboard. At one point, to compensate for the absence of anything good out the window and inspired by last night’s performance, Meg puts on The Runaways. She sings and Alexa sings along but the enthusiasm is lost by the end of the first verse, and after they stop singing, Joan and Cherie just sound loud and stupid, and Meg turns the volume down, little by little, until we can barely hear them.
Through all of this, Bev listens to her Walkman. Every time I catch her reflection I feel as though I’ve been shocked: first the electricity, then the emptiness. The presence, then the absence, of light. I want to pull over and hold her. I want her to look at me the way she did last night.
Later, at a gas station,
when I am standing at the pump and Bev is smoking around the back of the building, Meg climbs out and stands with me.
“The tension in there is almost unbearable,” she says. “But considering that Bev didn’t come back to our room last night, I think a high five might be in order.”
She holds up her hand. She smiles a little, but her eyes are concerned. I raise my hand. It meets hers with the quietest of slaps. Neither of us lowers our arms, so we stand still, together, hands touching above our heads.
A little later, we pull off the highway in Weed to use the bathrooms and stretch our legs. Alexa calls her aunt to let her know where we are and when she thinks we’ll arrive. Soon Meg prances out of the gas station store wearing a trucker hat. As she gets closer, I can make out the design. It’s one of those sexy girl silhouettes that semis have on their mud flaps or license plates. In red script above the girl: God Bless American Women.
“Dare you to wear this,” she says to me.
“You dare me?”
“Yeah.”
I grab the cap off her head and put it on mine, skewing it to the side. No big deal. Alexa and Meg are smiling at me. Bev is looking at the concrete.
“So?” I ask.
“I’d date you,” Meg says.
Alexa giggles. “You have to take that off before we get to our aunt and uncle’s.”
“I thought I’d class it up a little,” I say, faking incredulity. “I want to make a good impression. I just can’t believe I left my Confederate flag shirt at home.”
The sisters laugh and Bev forces a smile, and then we all just lean against the bus for a minute, watching the semi trucks pass in a row, an orange truck followed by a blue one followed by one with silver dolphin decals and chipped gold paint.
Alexa finds the snacks from yesterday’s fruit stand.
“Cherry?” she offers us. “Pistachio?”
Bev says yes and digs through her purse. She finds a scrap of paper and takes out her gum, but then she freezes.
“Shit,” she says.
“What?” we all ask.
Then I look at the scrap of paper. Starlight Motel. A reminder, too late.
“The amp,” Bev says.
Meg stares at Bev. She blinks. “Oh, fuck,” she says.
Slowly, we all turn to Alexa, knowing that though this will throw all of us off, she’ll be the one to take it the hardest. Her eyes are open wider than I’ve ever seen them, a cherry suspended in midair between herself and Bev.
“I told you not to put the amp in the closet,” she says.
“I know,” Bev says. She looks awful, mascara smeared below her eyes, hair in need of washing. Her white tank top is smudged with something blue—maybe Alexa’s hand paint—and across her face is utter hopelessness.
Bev blinks back tears but Alexa either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care. All signs of gentleness fade away.
“They’re expecting us in an hour. They’re making dinner. She was setting the table for us when we called her.”
“Fate?” Meg jokes, but Alexa ignores her.
“I reserve our places to stay and I book us our shows and I try to get us where we need to go but I can’t do everything. And we can’t have a show without an amp.”
No one knows what to say. We are at a standstill. We can’t afford to buy a new amp, and that one is on loan from my parents’ friend, so even if we could scrape together the money I wouldn’t want to come home without it. But Alexa and Meg’s family is waiting for us, and it’s clear that Alexa needs some off time.
“I’ll go back by myself,” I say.
“How?” Alexa asks.
“We’ll find a bus station. There has to be one in this town.”
“I just really want to see my aunt,” she says, her voice hopeful.
“You can,” I tell her. “You can see your aunt. We just have to find a bus station. You guys take Melinda and I’ll bus back to Redding. Then I’ll get as close as I can to your aunt’s house tonight and one of you can come pick me up.”
“You sure?” Meg asks.
“Yeah, it’s no problem.”
Alexa breathes deep, squeezes my arm.
“Thank you,” she says.
The gas station attendant directs us to the Greyhound station in Weed, a shabby brown building set back from a residential road. I grab my bag and tell Meg that I’ll call her phone when I board the bus for the trip back, and I’m almost out the door when Bev says, “Wait. I’m going, too.”
I shake my head. “I’m fine. You should go with them.”
“No. I’m the one who forgot the amp.”
“You don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to,” she says. “But I am,” and she steps out after me, messenger bag slung over her shoulder.
“Take good care of Melinda,” I say.
Meg crosses her heart, waves good-bye. I watch Melinda until it disappears, and then I join Bev inside. She stands at a Coke machine, feeding it a crumpled dollar that it keeps spitting back at her. The woman at the ticket counter shows me the Redding station on the map, and I’m relieved to see that it isn’t too far from the Starlight. When it’s time to pay, Bev appears next to me, holding more crumpled bills. I hand the woman my credit card.
We have to wait over an hour for our bus to arrive, so when a boisterous woman in cargo pants and an American flag T-shirt sits next to us, I am more than happy to hold up my end of the conversation.
When she really looks at me for the first time, I remember that I’m still wearing the mud-flap girl hat, but the woman doesn’t seem to care. I wonder if she knows I’m being ironic. Or maybe she takes it as a compliment—I mean, she is an American woman.
She tells me that she’s returning home from three weeks on the road, shows me a photograph of her daughter. I ask her what it’s like to drive a truck and she tells me that it’s lonely.
“It gets in your blood, though,” she says. “If I go more than a few weeks between jobs I get restless.”
Bev puts on her Walkman.
“And there’s always the CB,” the woman says. “I got friends I’ve never met in person, but we know each other through the radios.”
The trucker is going north; her bus arrives before ours does.
As soon as she walks away, Bev takes off her headphones.
“Don’t try to tell me you’re thinking of breaking into the trucking profession.”
“As you might remember,” I say, “I’m kind of at loose ends right now.”
She puts her headphones back on and I lean forward with my head in my hands. It would be so much easier if she had chosen to go with Meg and Alexa, if I were here by myself and not thinking of last night every other moment, and wondering—always—how Bev and I got to where we are now. So unlike how we used to be.
Gently, I take Bev’s headphones off her head. I make my voice even and kind. I try again.
“I was asking for Alexa,” I say. “I don’t remember seeing ‘trucker’ on her list.”
Bev nods.
I say, “We’re alone now. The trip’s almost over.”
She presses the stop button on her Walkman.
I say, “Maybe you could try to tell me why. I get it now, why you would have brought up going after eighth grade. But we spent four years after that planning. Why didn’t you tell me that you changed your mind?”
I watch her face. She blinks a couple times. She swallows. She takes a breath, and says, “I keep trying to think of how to explain it—” and then a voice booms over the intercom.
Our bus has arrived.
We pick up our things and walk outside and stand in a line we probably should have been in before. By the time we board, there aren’t any seats next to each other, so Bev takes one near the front as I continue down the aisle, away from her.
There is only one car in the Starlight parking lot.
“Looks like another slow night.”
“Yeah,” Bev says.
In the lobby again, Melvin regards us f
rom across the counter as though we are complete strangers.
“Hey,” I say. “We checked out this morning? Remember?”
His expression doesn’t change. Eventually, he lifts an eyebrow.
“Okay. And now you’re back.”
“We forgot something,” Bev says. “It’s in the room we were in last night. Two-o-six.”
Slowly, he turns on his stool and takes the key from the Peg-Board behind him.
“Or it might be in the room I was in,” I say. “One eleven.”
Bev turns to me but I pretend I don’t notice.
Melvin’s hand moves across the Peg-Board. His face is skeptical, but he hands me the key.
“Meet you back here in a few minutes,” I say to Bev, and slip out the door before she can respond.
The room has been cleaned. The carpet vacuumed, the bed made. For some reason, I expected it to be untouched since we left. Why clean a room in a motel where no one stays? You would think Melvin could give the maid a day off, but the room looks just like it did when I first walked in last night.
Still, even though the room is absent of any trace of us, I can get back some of the feeling of last night. We were right here. Her hair smelled like oranges and smoke. She was arching her back, breathing hard, watching my face. Every time she touched me I wanted to thank her, but it was only the beginning of us. I thought I had the rest of my life to say thank you, to tell her all of the things I was thinking, so I just kissed her everywhere I had fantasized about kissing her, and on other places, too—the inside of her elbow, the bottom of her rib cage—places I hadn’t yet discovered in the thousands of times I had imagined being with her like that.
We were right here.
The comforter stretches taut over the bed. Our footsteps have vanished from the carpet. I can’t believe that we could be so impermanent. I can’t even smell the smoke from Bev’s cigarette.
I need to leave something behind here. Something that will stay. This room should be a historical landmark, the site of the beginning and end of Colby and Bev. Several minutes have passed, and I know that if I wait too long there will be a knock on the door and I’ll have to go, but I need to leave a mark. It has to be significant enough to last, but subtle enough that the maid won’t notice and wash it away.