You sit in your broken down ‘84 Volvo GL sedan, the affectionately dubbed Shitbox, on the shoulder of Highway 101 South with all the crap from your sophomore year of college crammed into the backseat and trunk. You think that you should remember this, that it might be a good place to start a short story. But you’ve started a hundred stories. Beginnings are easy. 

Santa Cruz is a hundred miles in your rear view and there’s two hundred fifty miles to go to get home to LA, and it’s hot, and David—the gutter punk you just met yesterday, a friend of Alex’s who hitch-hiked down from Olympia, Washington and must’ve figured, once he got hooked up with you, that he was home free—is starting to smell. He reclines his seat, tucks his hands behind his head and his stink takes on the physical dimensions of a third, unwelcome passenger whose pointy elbows dig into your side. 

You wring the steering wheel like a wet towel. You should have driven slower. You knew better than to push the Shitbox so hard. The speed limit would have been sufficient, would have gotten you to LA by nightfall, but nightfall wasn’t soon enough. Something went awry this past year and the need to get home has never been so urgent. 

A layer of dust coats your sweat-sticky skin, a result of your trek up the highway to the nearest Call Box. On your hike, you’d found yourself wishing that you had a cell phone, but the only people you know with cell phones are drug dealers, and, aside from a dealer, you can’t imagine who in the world would want everyone they know to be able to reach them at any time.

To your left is the highway median, a lavish carpet of green, starkly contrasting the baked dirt and loose gravel of the shoulder on which the Shitbox rests perilously close to hurtling semis. You light a cigarette, take a deep drag and the despair you’ve felt ever since the Shitbox wheezed its way to the side of the highway, where it rattled, heaved and went ominously still, is replaced by that pressure in your chest that plagued you for a couple of weeks in May and had you halfway convinced that you had early-onset emphysema when—Thwack!—a bumblebee smacks the windshield like a small stone, followed closely by others—Thwack! Thwack!—and the sea of waist-high brush alongside the highway parts, unleashing a tsunami, wave after black-yellow wave of bumblebees, and their frenetic, menacing buzz washes over the Shitbox and you and David barely have time to scream FUCK! and crank up the windows before the bees roll back, all at once, into the shrubs. 

◆

 The ride to the mechanic somehow finds you crammed in between David and Jimmy, the sunburnt, heavyset tow-truck driver whose stained jeans rub up against your thigh. King City is only a few miles north, but time spent moving backwards passes slowly.

An AM radio evangelist asks, “Why are you in despair, O my soul?” 

“Ugh,” says David. “Could we listen to like…anything else?”

“Excuse me, son?” says Jimmy. 

Your cheeks redden and you scowl at David. 

“Hope in God,” says the evangelist. “For I shall again praise Him for the help of His presence.”

“Look, man. I don’t mean to offend you. It’s just…”

“Oh,” says Jimmy, leaning forward and looking over the top of his polarized Ray Bans. “Because for a second there it sounded like you were telling me what I should be listening to in my own tow truck.”

David rolls his eyes. “Relax, dude.”

“What’s that now?”

David lets Jimmy’s question linger in the air with the greasy french fry stink. 

“From the looks of you,” says Jimmy, “it seems like you oughta be paying close attention.”

David snorts and fixes his gaze out the window.

◆

Ed, the only mechanic in King City, California who can repair Volvos, has the kind of handshake that engenders submission—all calloused palms and grimy fingernails. The leathery texture of his skin accentuates your own baby-softness. When he lets go, you stuff your hand into your pocket and try to explain the symptoms exhibited by the Shitbox in its final moments of animation. As you speak, Ed’s gaze roams from your face to your car to David.

“Okay,” he says, chewing on a toothpick, his eyes still on your new friend. “We’ll take a look and see what’s what.”

Right about now you should be approaching the Grapevine, the final test of the Shitbox’s aging engine, before descending into a valley of trees, traffic, strip malls and your boyhood baseball fields. Instead, you await Ed the mechanic’s verdict in a filthy customer lounge with a gutter punk who seems no less content on the duct-taped recliner than he did in the passenger seat of your car, getting his free ride.

David leans back and sniffs. The fast food stench in the lounge is indistinguishable from the tow truck’s. “McDonalds puts petroleum in their chicken nuggets. You know that?” 

You muster a nod.

His gaze roams the walls. “This place reminds me of that Jack Nicholson movie. You know the one I’m talking about, with the hitchhiker and the lady who murder the lady’s husband.” 

“Postman Always Rings Twice.” 

“I don’t think that’s it.”

You open a book and try to read but the sentences slip through your fingers. 

David brings you a cup of water and flops down beside you on the thin-cushioned loveseat, breaching the body-odor buffer you were discreetly trying to maintain. You drink quickly and go for a refill, crossing the same gray industrial carpeting that lined your house back at school. You and your roommates never once vacuumed that carpet. Just gave it an occasional sweep with the same broom you used to eradicate spider webs and cigarette ash from the patio.

You depress the cooler valve and water fills your conical paper cup. David reclines, stretches his long, bony legs and crosses them at the ankles like he’s on a beach somewhere, watching pelicans dive for fish. 

He sighs. “This blows.”  

“Not much we can do about it.”

He looks up at the ceiling, puts his hands together in prayer. “Hope in God, for I shall praise thee if thee please fixes the Shitbox today.”

You chuckle. Maybe you need to lighten up. To hell with the body odor buffer, you think, and sit down beside him.

◆

David’s prayer falls on deaf ears. A special Volvo fuel pump needs to be ordered. It’ll be at least two days before you’re back on the road and five hundred bucks’ worth of parts and labor is going on Dad’s credit card. 

You gaze at your forlorn car—the mound of books, CDs and dirty laundry in the back seat plainly visible through the rear windows. 

“You’ll keep her locked up, right?”

Ed doesn’t look up from his paperwork.

You chuckle nervously. “Everything I own is in there.”

“Don’t worry, kid.” He wacks his ballpoint pen against the side of his clipboard, scribbles a few more notes, tears off an itemized estimate and hands it to you. His eyes soften. “Get a room. Get some beer. Sit out by the pool.” He gives you his business card and tells you to call tomorrow. 

◆

You and David stroll alongside the highway, cars and trucks trundling by like reluctant combat vehicles on their way into battle. The sun is still high overhead. Your tee shirt sticks to your skin. 

David talks about his travels, tells you a story about a middle-aged linguistics professor who picked him up outside of Eugene, Oregon and asked him if he’d ever tried crystal meth. David says he lied and told him no. Then he says that the guy put his hand on his thigh and asked if he’d like to.

“What’d you do?”

He scoffs. “What do you think I did?”

“I think you smoked his crank and let him blow you.”

“I showed him this,” and for a second, as he reaches into his shorts, you think he’s going to pull his dick out, but instead he produces a large, sheathed knife. 

You clear your throat. “I was kidding.”

“Can’t bum rides without protection,” he says, extracting the blade and turning it over so the sunlight glints off the metal. “Too many freaks out there.”

◆

The Motel 6 pool is a drinker-friendly four feet deep.  A sun-bleached sign says: 

No Dr nki g and No Di ing.

You throw a towel over the dirty chaise lounge and stretch out. David sits in about two feet of water on the pool steps and nurses a beer. 

The wispy clouds look incomplete in the white-blue sky, like bits of punctuation without any words between. You close your eyes and pretend the traffic din is the Pacific Ocean. You sip your High Life and send some gratitude out into the universe for the mini-mart cashier’s acceptance of your fake ID. Thanks to him, you’ve got eight more beers on ice in the room along with a pint of Jim Beam. The pressure in your chest is gone. You feel okay. 

David leans back and tries to float on the surface of the water but his body, all sinew, lean muscle and bone, keeps sinking.

“You got a girl?” he says.

“Nah.”

He grins. “A free man.”

You wince. “How about you?”

“A girl?” 

“Yeah.”

He opens his mouth, lets in some pool water and then spits it out in a fountain-like stream. “You know how it is. We fuck, but we’re not…like…tied down and whatnot.”

For as long as you can remember, tied down and whatnot is all you’ve wanted to be.

A crop duster flies overhead and tips its wings. 

David returns to the steps and sits, half in, half out of the water, sunlight gleaming against his pale, wet shoulders. His gaze finds the highway. “You ever read On the Road?” 

“Of course.”

“Bunch of bullshit,” he says.

“Yeah?”

A yellow blur whizzes by; a siren wails and a patrol car’s engine roars as it accelerates past the motel. 

“Alex says you can’t go on the road with the intention of writing a story about the guys you ran with on the road. It changes the way you perceive everything. Like pointing a camera at a bunch of assholes who’ve been picked by television producers and calling it The Real World.”

David finishes his beer and drops it in the water; he watches it bob for a few seconds, fill with water, tilt and sink.

You extinguish your cigarette and twist the cap off another High Life. “I read that Kerouac wrote it on a scroll so that he wouldn’t be tempted to go back and revise anything.”

“He had notes, man. He probably wrote down everything that Cassady said. That’s what killed him, you know.”

“Neal Cassady?”

“Yeah.”

“He lived for like twenty more years after On The Road was published.”

“Killed him just like Gonzo journalism killed Hunter S. Thompson. You can’t live free once you’ve been turned into some kind of mythical badass.”

“Hunter S. Thompson isn’t dead.”

“Sure he is.”

“No. He’s not.”

“Well, he might as well be.” He takes a deep breath and goes under. When he resurfaces, he shakes his scraggly hair like a dog, sprinkling your legs with droplets of water. They’re sure to evaporate within seconds in this heat but you can’t wait that long; you wipe them off with your towel.  

Back in the room you switch to whiskey and watch television. The liquor smooths things over and slows you down so that Simpsons reruns seem fresh. You laugh out loud at the jokes. Warm air blows in from the open window.

You think that maybe this is exactly what you needed: to hit the pause button. You think that maybe this is better than rushing home. But when you close your eyes, you’re haunted by an all-too-familiar vision.

Lisa, lithe like sunlight, the way it bends through cracks in the blinds. You can see her gliding through your front door last winter, noting the dead soldiers on the coffee table, the overflowing ashtrays, the carpet stains, the lacerated recliner, stuffing exploding from its arms. You take her coat as your housemates make themselves scarce. 

In your bedroom, you play her that song you’ve inexpertly recorded on your new four-track. She finds the melody, hums along. You talk about how much you miss your old band. She makes you promise to burn her a copy of the demo.

You wander back to the living room to sit on the tweed couch’s depressed, smoke-saturated cushions and drink Tecate. Housemates pause to say what’s up on their way to and from the kitchen. Somehow, she finds herself in a push-up contest with Ronnie and out-strongs your strong friend.

She’s involved with someone else, someone older, but she must feel at least some of what you feel. What else would she be doing there? 

◆

The motel curtains are not of the blackout variety and consequently, you do not escape early-morning sunshine’s malevolent rays. They insert themselves like magicians’ needles through a balloon. 

Out on the highway, the surge of traffic is underway. It sounds more urgent than yesterday, an infantry in retreat.

You prop yourself on an elbow, rub the crust from your eyes and swipe bits of ash from the surface of Ed the mechanic’s business card. 

Ed answers the phone on the sixth or seventh ring and tells you that you’re lucky, the fuel pump is on its way, the Shitbox will be ready by noon tomorrow. You hang up and a calm washes over you. Sunshine and traffic sounds are powerless to disrupt the guiltless sleep of time already lost.   

◆

It’s one in the afternoon before your head rises again from the pillow. Lying on his back, one of your unlit Parliaments between his lips, David scrapes fine brown hairs from his concave stomach with the knife. You roll over and reach for a slice of cold pepperoni pizza and a lukewarm beer. 

Halfway through your slice, you light one of your last two cigarettes. “Let’s go to the store.”

David doesn’t look up. “I’m good.” 

“Does that mean you don’t want anything?”

“You buying?”

  “C’mon.”

The cashier with the ponytail and the electrified crucifix tattooed on his left forearm looks at you differently today. Yesterday he barely saw you, even when he carded you for the beer and gave your fake ID the nod. Instead he’d looked right past you to get an eyeful of David, squinted like he was searching through an archive of mug shots stored in his brain. But today he lets his gaze linger, as though your quick return has him thinking that he might’ve missed something the first time. 

You head for the beer aisle and grab a twelve pack. Behind you, the door chimes. You glance up in time to catch the hemorrhoidal gait of a highway patrolman in the anti-theft mirror as he lumbers past David—reclined against a magazine rack near, tearing open a package of sunflower seeds with his teeth. You slip the beer back in the fridge.

“Afternoon, officer,” says David. The patrolman pauses, looks him up and down. “Hot enough out there for ya?”

“Sure.”

“You got air-conditioning in those patrol cars?” He pops a few seeds in his mouth and gnashes away.

“Of course.”

David spits the empty shells into his palm and pours a few more into his mouth. “Moms used to own a ‘74 Impala. We once took a road trip out to Palm Springs and she had to blast the heater the whole fuckin way so the goddamn engine wouldn’t overheat. We stopped every fifty miles for water, and my sister and I would pour it over our heads and get back in, completely soaked, and, I shit you not, we’d be bone dry in ten minutes.” 

The patrolman plucks some pork rinds from the chip rack. David chuckles and approaches the cashier, spits a few more shells into his hand. “You got a trash can back there?”

The cashier takes a plastic trash bin from behind the counter. “How about you eat the rest of those outside?”

“Sure thing,” David says, proffering the bag. “What do I owe ya?”

The cashier scans the barcode. “Dollar seven.” 

David wipes his palm on his jeans, reaches into his pocket and fishes out a handful of coins. He drops them on the counter, counts out exact change, collects the leftover coins and walks outside.

The patrolman and the cashier shake their heads at each other like they know just what the other is thinking. The patrolman heads for the refrigerated drinks. You avert your gaze from the mirror and start stroking your chin, playing the role of an indecisive customer. He rounds the corner and ponders the myriad flavors of Gatorade. You feel his sunglassed gaze before you see it. It creeps up your spine like a centipede, little unhurried legs making slow but steady progress. You face him, nod politely, catch your reflection in his aviators and look down. His boots are shined and buffed, every inch of him a mirror. You turn away, open the refrigerator door and pretend to waver. 

The door chimes. “It’s a fuckin oven out there!”

The patrolman grabs a drink and clomps toward the register. A moment later, a hand grips your shoulder.  

“What’s the holdup?” says David. Shells of sunflower seeds are wedged into the crevices between his teeth. His irises twinkle like sunshine caught in sandstone. “Just grab something and let’s get outta here.” You frown severely. He chuckles, his bony shoulders dancing beneath his threadbare tee shirt. 

“Ponytail sold you beer yesterday,” he whispers. “All this stalling is making you look suspicious.” 

Your eyes widen and your nostrils flare. 

He laughs. “All right, all right.”

You glance behind you. The patrolman is staring at the candy bars. “You see that game yesterday?” he says to the cashier.

“I already told ya, man,” says Ponytail. “I don’t watch sports on the TV ‘less there’s four tires and seven-fifty horsepower.”

“Yeah, yeah,” says the patrolman, “but it’s Jordan. You gotta love Jordan.”

“Meh.” The cashier grins. “I don’t gotta love nothing but Christ and motor oil.”

David groans and digs into the pocket of his jeans. He pulls out a greasy wad of fives and ones, counts the money and stuffs it back into his pocket. “These rednecks could yap all day.”  He grabs a twelve pack of High Life, marches to the counter and plops down the beer. The bottles clink indecorously. 

“Looks like it’s Miller time,” he says. 

“Whatever you say, buddy.” Ponytail scans the beer and looks at David bluntly. “You got ID of course.”

“Of course!” David plunges his hand into his back pocket. His brow furrows. He tries the other pocket but turns up nothing. He pats the front of his jeans. “Shit. Must’ve left it back at the motel.” 

“Well, I can’t sell you this beer less you’ve got a valid California ID.”

The patrolman saddles up to David. “You wouldn’t be trying to buy that beer illegally, would you, son?”

David laughs. “You think I’d try buying beer in front of a cop if I were underage?”

The patrolman looks at Ponytail. “Think this guy looks dumb enough to do that?”

Ponytail grins. “Just might.”

“Ouch,” says David. “The NASCAR fan thinks I look dumb.” 

Ponytail sneers. 

“Sir,” says the highway patrolman.  “Would you mind turning towards me?” 

“Of course not.” David faces him and smiles. 

The patrolman peers into his eyes. “You wouldn’t happen to be under the influence of narcotics, would you?”

“Not currently, no.”

There follows a painfully long pause, at the end of which the patrolman says, “How about we go outside for a minute and have us a talk?”

“What’s wrong with inside, officer? I told ya, it’s a fuckin oven out there.”

“Son, I’m only gonna tell you once to refrain from using that kinda language with me.”

“And I’m only gonna tell you once not to call me ‘son.’ Officer.”

The patrolman points. “Outside. Now.”

“Yo, Josh!” David hollers. Your stomach plummets. “This fascist cop is harassing me just because I left my ID at the motel.”

Your lips part but no sound escapes. Your mouth has gone bone dry. You fumble with your wallet, remove your fake ID, cram it into your underwear and walk to the front of the store. 

The patrolman’s gaze bores through your skull. “This your friend?” You clear your parched throat, unsure of what to say. He’s really not your friend at all. In fact, you don’t much like him. He’s a friend of a friend who’s been on the wrong side of your nerves since you met two days ago. 

You clear your throat again, dredge up enough saliva to speak. “We were headed to LA but something about the fuel pump and my car…”

“Okay.  I just…”

“It’s an old Volvo you know, lots of little things wrong with it, but she usually…”

“Look!” the patrolman barks. “Unless you want to encourage your friend to step outside with me, you can stop talking now.” He takes hold of David’s elbow. 

“Take your fucking hands off me!” says David, yanking his elbow away and heading for the door.

“Hey!” the patrolman and Ponytail shout simultaneously. 

The three of them tumble outside like cowboys through saloon doors; blinding sunbeams stream inside. The door swings shut and you stand in the stillness. 

You walk outside slowly, careful not to convey any hint of a threat. 

David’s chest is pinned to the patrolman’s cruiser and he’s being handcuffed. The patrolman is already onto “If you cannot afford an attorney,” and on the roof of the cruiser is David’s sheathed knife. Ponytail stands off to the side, grinning.

David catches your eyes, tries to smile, but the smile turns to a grimace as the patrolman presses against his back with his elbow and notches the handcuffs tighter.

“Do you understand these rights I have just read to you?”

“The cuffs are too tight, man!”

The patrolman gets right in his ear. “I said, do you understand these rights I have just read you!”

“Yes! I understand! Fuck!”

The patrolman opens the back door, shoves David inside. As he maneuvers out of the parking lot, you catch a glimpse of David, head lowered, chin tucked into his chest.

Ponytail marches triumphantly by you and the door to the mini mart clangs shut. You imagine him resuming his post behind the register, already embellishing the duller aspects of the story in his mind, weaving a narrative that will be told and retold for months, maybe even years, to come. You fish your fake ID out of your underwear and walk inside. You grab a six-pack. Ponytail rings up your beer, “I saw your ID yesterday, right?” 

You show him the card. “Can I get a pack of Parliaments?” 

Along with the cigarettes, he offers something in the way of a warning, something about being mindful of the company you keep. You nod and keep your mouth shut. 

◆

Back in your motel room you crank up the AC, crack a beer, light a cigarette and stand by the window. Down in the pool, an elderly man with spindly arms is swimming perhaps the world’s shortest laps, each one lasting all of two strokes before he reaches the other side. You watch for a minute before the futility of it all slumps you back down on the unmade bed.

Shortly after that first hang with Lisa, you follow through on a beer-buzzed promise that no one, including you, expects you to keep—you start swimming with her three days a week at the East Field House pool. It’s your first consistent exercise in years.

Lisa’s face, emerging from the water in the lane next to yours. Her slicked-back hair; her slightly parted lips; her droplet-beaded eyelashes.

Being in the pool together feels so close to being naked together. Not just because of your state of undress, but because you have to get close to hear one another over the churn of the swimmers. There is privacy in that public space, in the impossibility of being overheard.

The phone rings. It’s David, using his one phone call to call you. He says the chickenshit cops are charging him with attempted purchase of alcohol by a minor and misdemeanor resisting arrest; his bail’s been set at $2,500 dollars; he’s going to see the magistrate the next morning or the morning after that. Then he complains about his sister not answering her phone and mumbles something about your parents, but, whatever he had in mind of asking, he has the good sense to drop. 

“Shit,” you say. “Just…try to stay positive. I’m sure your sister will be able to help you out.”

He goes quiet for a minute before saying that he should go back to his holding cell, that he’ll call you again in the morning. The word “why” edges its way to the tip of your tongue but you leave it there. “Okay,” you mutter.

His clothing is strewn across the motel room floor. You stuff it into his backpack and discover a dimebag of weed and a flat wooden pipe that’s been carved to fit into the change pocket of a pair of jeans. 

You stretch out on the bed and turn on the TV. You consider calling home and telling your parents the story, but by the time you’ve worked out a parent-friendly version, you’ve knocked back too many beers. 

◆

The beer runs out before night falls. You go for a walk and grab a burger. You think about getting more beer, maybe just a tall boy this time, but you can’t face that cashier again. Instead, you wander back to the motel, moths swarming beneath the streetlamps in the soupy yellow dusk. 

The sight of the room makes you flinch. The unmade beds, dead soldiers and dirty ashtrays look like a projection of your insides. From the corner of the room, David’s backpack beckons. You hesitate for a split second before crossing the floor, digging out the pipe and the dimebag and packing a bowl. 

The weed hits you immediately and takes you somewhere safer, a place beyond guilt, shame, confusion and fear—just the denuded white walls, a blank television screen and the respirating highway. You try to sync your breathing to the traffic, inhaling with the approach of cars and exhaling as they fly past. But the cars pass at unpredictable intervals, so you soon find yourself holding your breath, or breathing in and out too quickly. And it might be this irregular breathing that snatches you from your comfortable remove, but suddenly you’re somewhere new, a place where nothing is distant, where the thing from which you’ve been running is right on top of you, sinking its teeth into your calf. 

Lisa spots you having a smoke after class. She yells from across the quad, skips toward you, her long hair filling with wind, her face wearing the same glisten it does when she emerges from the water, her smile announcing Great News! before language has had a chance to catch up. She grabs your elbow. And the words “I broke up with him! I’m single now!” vault past her lips and sock you right in the heart flutters. 

You’re staring at the walls, watching this memory play out so clearly, when the film suddenly stops rolling and you can’t see what happens next. You shake your head back and forth, hit your temple with the base of your palm. You play it back, again and again, but to no avail. You don’t understand. How can it be that you of all people, you, who make an artform of longing, can’t remember how you respond to the glistening girl when she grabs your arm and says Yes? 

You remember something that comes after—an underwhelming dinner at Saturn Cafe followed by an awkward hug in the parking lot. You remember walking away knowing that whatever it was, whatever it had had the possibility of being, was over.

But you have no idea where the distance comes from—if it has materialized spontaneously over tofurky club sandwiches or if it has already been living inside you, and, if it’s the latter, how long it has been there.

Your lungs constrict. Beads of perspiration amass on your forehead, under your arms, in the small of your back. Your heart thump-thumps in your chest so loudly that at first you think someone’s at the door. 

You retreat to the bathroom and sit on the toilet. Your heart beats, your fingers tingle. In the dark, the past gets even closer.

Once she’s out of your life, everything returns to normal. Except for the pool. Somehow you keep up the swimming. Ronnie comments on it. He looks you in the eyes and nods approvingly, admitting that you’ve surprised him. He expected you to quit once you stopped going with her. 

And when he says it, you have to admit that it is surprising. But you don’t feel the pride you’re supposed to feel when you surprise your friends. 

You emerge from the bathroom, grab the room key and burst through the room door. You duck past the vending machines at the end of the hall, descend the dimly lit staircase, jog past the murky pool and hop the iron fence. 

A short stretch of dirt and a thin strip of paved shoulder sit between you and the highway. Headlamps sharpen from horizontal streaks into small globes of light as cars approach; tail lights turn to soft red splotches until the dark stamps them out. A big rig charges by like it’s trying to swallow the night. 

You wait for your clearing, crouched like a sprinter, coiled but loose, so that when you spring, you do it fluidly, as if you’re body had already been in motion, and you’re halfway out on the southbound side of the 101, the grassy median spread out before you like the answer, when another truth smacks you in the face: You are in King City, California. You won’t last thirty seconds out here before you’re spotted by the Highway Patrol and thrown in jail with David. 

You stop dead in your tracks. You whirl around and try to run but the pair of headlamps bearing down on you trigger a total paralysis. The horn blares. The car swerves. It misses you so narrowly that you can hear the driver shouting from behind his closed window. And if there had been another car behind him, you would have been gone, because for a second, all you can do is stand there, trembling. Your body wants to crumple where you stand. But your will to live is strong enough to get your ass off the highway.

You’re too rattled to enter through the lobby and risk facing the night clerk, but your legs and hands are shaking pretty violently so you’ll have to wait a few minutes before hopping the iron fence again. 

You grip the bars. No Di ing, says the sign by the pool. You watch the occasional vehicle blow by and wait for the shaking to stop.

◆

Early the next morning, you awaken to the ringing telephone. When you try to answer, your throat is so dry you can hardly speak.

“Josh?” David says, in response to your hoarse croak. “That you?”

Clearing your throat only makes things worse. “What’s up?” you rasp.

“I made bail.”

“Yeah?”

“Can you pick me up at the sheriff’s station on your way out of town? It’s not far.”

You’re relieved. For him and for yourself.    

“Yeah. Yes, of course.”

He gives you the address, says thank you. You hang up, chug a couple glasses of water and call Ed the Mechanic. The part has arrived. The car will be ready within the hour. 

◆

The Shitbox coasts along 101 South without any trouble. David is taciturn, remote. He’d been slumped on the curb outside the jail, picking at a scab on his ankle when you’d arrived. You had to call his name to get his attention. He nodded at you when he climbed in, said, “Thanks for not leaving me,” but that was it. 

You dig your battered Duke and Trane cassette out of the glove compartment because it helps you breathe. Of course you want to know what jail was like but you don’t want to pester him with questions until he indicates that he’s ready to talk. 

David stares out the window. When side A ends, you eject the tape and flip it over. 

David sits up abruptly. “Aw shit. How’d she get out there?”

Up ahead on the grassy median, a cow grazes.

“Whoa,” you say. “Should I do something?” 

“What can you do?”

You scan the highway’s shoulder. “Find a Call Box?”

“I’m sure someone already called.”

You pass her, slowing down just enough to get a look at her soft brown features, her indifferent gaze, her methodical munching. David turns around in his seat and watches her through the rear window. “She looks content enough.”

“You think?”  

“No bullshit job. No disappointed family.”

You light a cigarette. “I start my summer gig next week.”

“Yeah?”

“Accounting assistant at a property management office.”

“Ugh. No. Fuckin. Thanks.”

You smile. “My friend’s dad owns the company. He’s alright.”

David chuckles.

“But my boss, the guy who oversees the property management stuff, he might be my least favorite person in the world…that is, outside of your highway patrol friend and the convenience store clerk.”

David clenches his jaw. “Those fucks.”

“I honestly don’t care about the yelling. That shit is…whatever. It’s his good moods that scare me.”

David cracks a smile. “Yeah?”

“Last summer, he traps me and this other temp by the copy machine, his favorite place to corner people, and he throws his arm around me, squeezes my shoulders and says, ‘You guys see Chirstina Aguilera sing the national anthem last night at the Dodgers game?’ When we both shake our heads No, he says, ‘You know what Christina Aguilera stands for, right? H-O-T, hot!’”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Then he holds out his hand and makes us both give him low fives.”

“Jesus.”

“I almost vomited into his palm.”

David laughs.

“I swear, if I hear that guy whistling Genie In A Bottle down the hall this summer, I’m running for the exit like the fuckin building’s on fire.”

He laughs again. “That’s funny,” he says. “You’re kinda funny.”

You shrug.

“I mean, really. Do you know that?”

“That I’m funny?” You stamp out your cigarette in the ashtray.

“You could use that, you know.”

You pick up your cigarette pack and shake another one loose. “What do you mean?” 

“I don’t know,” he says. “To get girls I guess.”

You put the cigarettes back down and fiddle with the rearview mirror. “What makes you think I need help with girls?”

“I don’t know, man. Don’t take this the wrong way, okay?”

You stiffen and take a shallow breath.  

“It’s just that you can come across a little…I don’t know…a little arrogant. Maybe a little sad. Girls like guys who make them laugh.”

Your grip tightens on the steering wheel. You swerve more violently than necessary to avoid a pothole.

“You’re pissed now?” he says.

You smile, exhale sharply.

“It’s just something to think about,” he says. “You’ve got this way of being with someone and not being there at the same time, you know? Like you’d rather be anywhere else than with that person.” 

Your pulse is thumping in your neck like you’ve just swum some hard laps and there’s a tingling in your gut similar to when you let the mini mart cashier get away with giving you advice. “I guess I’ve been in a weird place.”

“I hear you,” he says. “King City is a real shithole.”

“No. I didn’t mean…”

“It’s a joke, man. I can be funny, too.”

“Right,” you say. 

He looks out the window. You change lanes and speed up to pass a big rig. The Shitbox squeaks and rattles. 

You breathe deeply. “I missed a chance with someone this year. I think…no, I know she liked me.”

“What went wrong?”

“I honestly don’t know. I thought I wanted it so bad and then when she…when I…” You light a cigarette, cough. 

“You smoke too much,” he says.

“I know.”

“You think too much, too.” 

“Yeah.”

“Some people are proud of that. It’s like a whatdoyoucallit…a humble brag. Like ‘my greatest flaw is that I care too much’ kinda shit.”

You cough again. Mash your cigarette out in the ashtray. “I hate those fucking people.”

“It’s nothing to be proud of. Spending all our energy thinking instead of doing.”

The highway turns westward toward the sun. You flip down the visor and sit up straighter in your seat. “Remind me…what’s in LA?”

He squints into the sunlight. “Who knows, man. I get antsy if I don’t keep moving.”

“You’re expecting things to be different down there?”

“Different how?”

You shrug. “I don’t know. Different from whatever it is that makes you envy fucking cows.”

He chuckles. “Why are you going?  Why not spend the summer in your little beach town?”

“That little beach town terrifies me.”

“So much terror…your boss, your college town.”

You breathe deeply. “Yeah, well…at least when I’m home, I know who I am. I know what to expect.”

“Well shit,” he says. “That’s exactly it, man. That’s it exactly.” 

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