OK, so I've been writing a lot of these stories lately. The whole damsel in distress thingy (if thingy were a word, would it be with a y or with an ie? Think about it⦠Wait. It's a word, isn't it? Screw it; I digress) but it's my reaction to the television. I can't stop! I'll try to work in some subtle feminism things. I promise.
She'd felt like a fifties movie star when she'd left, with her scarf around her head, the hot wind warming her face. The convertible was a good choice, she'd thought, her left hand lazily drifting in the air resistance on the side of the car. And thank god it's a reasonable color. She'd smiled as her attention was once again drawn to the candy apple red exterior of the Ford Mustang.
Her brother had given it to her to drive to her new home. He'd been preparing for a move to Albany, and she'd decided she would be able to get a train to New York from there.
She'd been able to feel her past on her back still, pressing and pushing and tearing her mind away from the road ahead. She'd thought that it would disappear, evaporate, and all the healing bones would become whole again the second she 'got the hell out of Dodge,' but she still felt it. And it never left her, which frightened her more than the possibility of her past's return. It shook her and rocked her from the inside, and every time she saw a dead dog or a flash of bleached blond hair, her world was a tornado.
It was the perfect plan, or, it had been until it failed. She'd saved money in a jar buried under her favorite tree, filed for a transfer in complete secrecy, and hadn't told a soul except for her brother on that last day. Her brother wouldn't tell anyone. She knew that. Partially because he was locked up in a mental institution, with his bright red car and his favorite slippers, but also because he loved her, and he understood, even if nobody else did.
She recalled the conversation with the utmost clarity, reveling in her unspoken understanding with him.
"Sammy, I've got to get out."
"Why?"
"It happened again. I have money. I need the car."
His head had turned, and he'd looked her in the eye, something he hadn't done in years. He smiled. "I'm so proud of you." And he'd handed her his keys β put them in her hand and curled her fingers around them. The metal was warm from his pocket, where the keys had rested since the day he got the car, seven years earlier. She shook her head, but he'd curled her fingers tighter around them, until the metal started to cut into her hand. With a smile and the closing of a one way door, she'd gone.
She wished that Sam could visit her, now that she was wrapped in the same color sheets as he β too white and too starchy. She stretched her feet out in front of her and lay back, working her bruised ribs up on the pillow behind her.
She might leave it all behind again, running like she'd been taught. Maybe to Russia. Her great-grandmother had been Russian β a wrinkled prune of a woman with withered skin that looked like paper but felt like silk.
"You go to zee Urals," Lindsay had been told time and time again, "vere zee blood ees cold. These men, here, they are hot. Hot blood ees bad. Your mother, she knows this. You must not make same meestake. You go vere zee blood ees cold."
Lindsay hadn't followed the advice so well, a fact which she regretted more than she'd ever admit to. Then again, her grandmother had been crazy. She used to eat raw shrimp smothered in peanut butter and walk through the house naked. But she knew men, and how they worked.
Russia might be nice, Lindsay thought, picturing herself wandering through the streets of Moscow, a Russian phrasebook in her hand. She knew no Russian, though, which she supposed would be a problem.
She was seeing snowy mountains and planning on picking up a copy of Doctor Zhivago when the door slammed open, and she found herself staring a stunned and confused Danny right in the eyes.
If you didn't get that, it's a Russian-accented voice saying "You go to the Urals (a mountain range in Northern Russia) where the blood is cold. These men, here, they are hot. Hot blood is bad. Your mother, she knows this. You must not make the same mistake. You go where the blood is cold."
