American Spirit: A Novel (24 page)

“Figured I better grab some coffee or something,” Matthew says while stretching his arms above his head. This is met with a frozen smile and eyes that seem to be paused while she tries to decode what Matthew means; can grabbing some coffee mean buying cocaine? Do johns ask for sex now by saying they’re looking for coffee? What could this clown possibly be saying in street cipher?

“Oh, okay, time for something to keep you warm, huh?”

“Yeah, you know, or those little cans of the cold stuff, or whatever, I guess.” And now Matthew is stretching his legs; to motorists a stretch, but to his new friend, all sequined and
bleached up, another confusing cue to decipher, and so she asks him.

“Do you date?”

This strikes Matthew as a little forward, but maybe she’s getting at something. Maybe it’s obvious to the world that he’s in the middle of figuring out what the hell is happening between marrying Kristin and meeting Tatiana. Or maybe it’s one of those things where this woman is going to say that she read something somewhere about how people in a relationship are able to drive longer distances with less accidents than single people, because they have someone who cares about them waiting for them to get home, or something like that. You know, like that article you read occasionally that says people who are married live longer or are less prone to have heart attacks according to certain studies; maybe that’s why she’s asking. You can’t judge people on appearance; for all Matthew knows, this woman goes home at night and reads
The New York Times
and listens to NPR and waits to meet like-minded people around town to discuss things they’ve both read or listened to. Matthew thinks about it for a minute, hems and haws on an answer, because it feels a little silly to say that he and Tatiana are dating. It feels even stranger, well, just plain untrue, to say he and Kristin are dating. But they are technically, legally, very much together. Matthew has been staring at this parking lot friend of his for a minute while he thinks of all this, and who knows what that telegraphs to her, who knows what that means in some
circles. Fuck it, for the sake of conversation, yes, fine, he’s dating. The intricacies of it are nobody’s business but his.

“Yeah, I’m dating. Gotta grab some coffee and stay awake. It’s either that or I’m waking up on the shoulder or wrapping it around a pole, right? Take it easy.”

Jesus. This reply is loaded beyond what Matthew must realize. Yes he’s dating, plus he needs to stay awake, and he might wake up on a shoulder, or he might wrap it around a pole. The woman’s eyes are dollar signs; this guy wants drugs, he wants to pay for someone to stay the night until he wakes up, he wants the stripping maybe, the pole dancing thing or a blow job or whatever “wrapping it around a pole” means—holy Christ, it’s a full-meal deal with this guy, it’s a month’s overhead from one tired driver in a Walgreens’ parking lot.

Inside, the place is a long-drive paradise; eyedrops, yes, tall skinny cans, yes, little fat vials of jump, yes, and even a pad that heats when you shake the chemicals inside it, a sack of hot chemical reaction to place above the waist, between the back and the seat, right on the kidney. Everyone in the place looks like reality TV. A morbidly obese man and skinny little teenage boy, who look like they know how to make drugs out of almost anything, buy the big twenty-four-ounce cans of energy drink; the cans look huge in the teenager’s hand, and tiny in the grip of the jumbo man. They talk fast about what to mix it with, vodka, or maybe really strong rum, they’re saying. The garnish might be unpaid bills, court dates, and blood pressure medication. But what is one to do,
this is a drugstore, after all, so their shopping list seems sensible in light of that.

In the checkout line, a couple of pretty young girls giggle and wait to pay for a couple of candles and stupid novelty hats; cocktailing or dealing, no doubt, starting their twenties and splitting an apartment somewhere around here. Matthew tries not to stare at them, wondering what years of this place will bring; the head racing with this refrain:
It starts off cute and then it gets ugly.
Out comes the little phone and email thing, the tiny keyboard on the screen takes the refrain, the thumb finds Matthew’s email address, it cc’s Tatiana on this, the index finger clicks on Send. Then, more cash to a cash register, via Matthew’s hand and then the hand of the pockmarked kid wearing a red smock and trying to stay on track in this place.

Out the door with a little white plastic bag of fortified blood nourishment to keep the eyes open. Foot hits the mat, and the door jerks and hums open. Just out the electric door, the Audi is still there, but the bleached smile, boobs, and sequins are not in the passenger seat. That’s because, holy shit, she’s across the lot leaning up against the Taurus. Matthew does a fast and seamless U-turn without breaking stride, head down, bag in hand, and goes right back into the store. Upon reentering the store in the same breath that he exited, the security guard by the door perks up instantly, eyes on Matthew, and seems to be reviewing in his head whatever manual they sent him home with in night school;
Okay, I can’t use unnecessary force because the perpetrator hasn’t
done anything yet, and I can’t mace or Taser him, because I don’t have probable cause to believe he’s a threat yet. But he has just reentered the store with a bag trying not to look at anyone, and he’s done this only seconds after leaving, so we’ve definitely got a situation on our hands. I can’t believe I did crystal meth continuously from 1993 to 2003. I am glad I have this job. I cannot afford to screw this up.

Matthew immediately makes like he’s browsing, takes a minute of fake browsing to think, damnit, think: Why the hell is the hooker standing by the rental Taurus? He shivers at the thought of what thug must have the keys to that Audi she was sitting in; what twitchy reprobate is in this store right now waiting to take the driver’s seat of that thing and hear about the john that led her on, then backed out and stiffed her? Between the bloody towels all over the hotel in Los Angeles, the hooker situation here in Reno, and the ghost of the marriage back in Connecticut, it seems like girls are nothing but trouble. There is giggling coming from the checkout line. It’s the two girls buying the novelty hats, looking at Matthew, and laughing. Matthew looks down to realize he has basically, to anyone unfamiliar with his hooker situation, just walked out of a store, then run right back in, sped over to an aisle with every ass-centric product a pharmacy stocks, and stood entirely too close to the rack, terrified and staring at it, muttering the phrase, “What the hell am I going to do? What’s my plan?” over and over again. He looks up at the girls giggling, he looks at the rack and realizes where he’s standing, he turns and walks past the guard who is now
slowly walking toward him, and he heads out the door again to handle this.

On the walk across the parking lot to the Taurus, the head stays down, and inside it, conversation reels and rallies up some sensible confidence, then undermines it; build it, burn it down, build it, burn it down:
Fuck it, it’s your car for the remainder of the rental period, it’s not like she’s even on the contract, why are you so afraid to approach what is technically your car? Just ask her what she misunderstood; why she’s waiting for you; what she thinks is happening or what she thought you meant. Yeah, but this could get really bad, this could come off like one of those things where it looks like you’re trying not to pay a hooker. You see that in movies and television every so often, the thing where a guy is beat up, and it looks like he was trying to get out of paying a hooker. Look, it’s not like you had sex with her.

I know, but it doesn’t have to be about sex. In the shows and movies, that’s often the way it goes down; nobody had sex, but then the hooker tells some backup muscle that the guy’s not paying, just taking up her time, and then the backup muscle guy starts beating up the confused man who didn’t even have any sex.
The head looks up in the last five or six steps of walking up and then it says: “Hi, so, I’m not sure what we arranged there when I was walking in.”

“You said you’re dating. And if you’re looking for a date in front of Walgreens in this town, I’m it,” she says with the stale cheer of salesmanship.

“I just meant I’m dating, that, you know, I have a girlfriend.
She’s not my girlfriend per se. I think you’re great, I’m not saying I…” And this is cut short by laughter. Matthew tries to join in the laughter, but is maybe too humbled by the experience of a hooker pointing and covering her mouth and laughing at him and slapping her thigh as she does it, as if this is the funniest stupid misunderstanding ever; all in the parking lot of a chain drugstore next to an interstate. It is, in fact, pretty humbling.

“Oh, sweetie, that’s fine, that’s all right,” all these words making their way through a smile that’s turned maternal. “You got more driving ahead of you tonight, baby?”

“Yeah. I’ve got a bunch. I’ll see how much I knock out tonight before I get too tired to drive,” Matthew says with too much smile and relief.

“You gotta sleep. That’s the thing. You can’t push it like people try to, honey.”

“Oh yeah, I’m pretty safe about it.”

“Okay, baby, you be safe.”

And with that she walks back to the Audi. Matthew stands at the Taurus, a forty-five-year-old man having taken mothering where he can find it, a ten-year-old having promised a hooker to be safe while driving—thirty-five years just vanishing for a minute, and without the help of the Age Defying Cream with Botafirm advertised on the billboard towering over them on the near horizon. He unlocks the wintergreen sedan, crams in, pays attention only to ignition, first his own ignition by way of a couple of slammed skinny cans, then the car’s, by way of key. He quickly opens the brittle plastic wrap
on the heating pad and tosses the wrapper in the back, holds up the chemical pouch, giving it five or six fast shakes the way they do in emergency room dramas on television. He tucks it back between the right kidney and the seat.

Back on the road, and the eyes stay open until a ways into Idaho, and a night of sleep is in order at a motel someplace near Boise; one of those off-ramp junctions clustered up by absentee owners of the tiny franchises of big chains—Holiday Inn Express, a Dunkin’ Donuts kiosk stuffed inside a Hardee’s or Carl’s, a Baskin-Robbins jammed inside a Subway, stapled onto the side of a Shell or Arco gas station. Someday in America it will all be one place, one brand, owned by one corporation—everything will be called McFridayBucksExpress&Things, and that’s where people will go no matter what they need.

The full-size bed is just enough room for Matthew to fall asleep with a few false starts where he wakes up in a fast twitch, convinced he’s dozed off behind the wheel on 80. The lull finally comes; a silent montage of Tatiana and Los Angeles; romantic little clips fading on and out with thirty-frame dissolves, the standard mainstream movie stuff until the interruption of bloody towels, which leads to sleepy, inexplicable thoughts of skeletons on fire playing bluegrass music on banjos made of trash at a combination wedding/race riot. Waking up in time for the free continental breakfast passes as having one’s act together; a bright little linoleum room with single-serving oatmeal, black coffee, and orange juice. All of it is surprisingly good; it’s easy to think one
has been missing out all these years—how long has this stuff been sitting on counters in little rooms for free like this? And they’re effective and substantial, these whole oats, this coffee, this orange juice. The oatmeal sticks to the ribs through Boise, through Mountain Home, up to the corner of the state as it turns into Montana. And the hippy snacks from Laurel Canyon last past that and eventually Matthew is pulling past Henry’s Fork and then into the southwest corner of Montana.

Tic Tac, Modoch, and the Bearded Lonely Pervert

S
UMMER IS IN FULL SWAY,
swing, and stagger in most of the nation, but here in West Yellowstone, the season is characteristically a step behind and hung up in late spring; there are nearly melted drifts of snow from the last of spring’s storms that were plowed to the side of Main Street. The place is littered with perfect American families in cars and campers buying little souvenirs made of turquoise and leather, probably made in Vietnam. The entire town is made to look like the Indians had a peaceful time of the country’s colonization and simply decided in cheery fashion to open little gift shops that sell headdresses and tiny burlap satchels of chocolate wrapped to look like gold coins. Nothing is called a gift shop, it’s a Trading Outpost, Mercantile, General
Store—a concrete tepee in a gravel lot sells European coffee drinks and pastry. Every motel, free of heartbreak, never stained by the tears and nicotine of lonely salesmen or drunk conventioneers saddened by instant freedom from spouses and children—The Evergreen Motor Inn; The Stage Coach; The Cowboy Cabin; Pine Shadows Motel; The Kids Fall Asleep with Parents in Love Motor Lodge; The Mom and Dad Laughing and Kissing While Young Hearts Dream of Bison and Cowboys and Bright Stars in Gigantic Skies Motor Lodge Cabin Hitching Post. And there’s Bud Lilly’s fly-fishing shop where men with short graying hair and baggy tan Gore-Tex waders bullshit in the parking lot while they drink hot coffee and maybe wonder why the dream came true so late in life; they have finally made their money, they hadn’t banked on it taking so long, and now going fishing includes plane tickets, expensive guides, and big tips forked over in gravel parking lots under bruised skies and sunsets. A text from Tim hits Matthew’s phone and gives the final waypoints and directions to meeting up: