32.
There is a crackle and a spark. Like when a fire spits life, only this time it's cold water poured over colder ice. It's a hundred little lightning bolts in a glass, the chaos of resistance, of forced collaboration. I stare at the cup, watch as condensation rises on the outside, congeals, falls in streams. The ice coalesces, melts. Layers of clarity turned opaque. Tanya comes down the stairs, her hand tracing the railing, hovering and touching and hovering and touching. I look up to meet her eye just as she's graced the last step. She stands there, hesitant. Waiting. But for what?
I don't move, a deer caught in the headlights of a semi-truck, stunned to stillness. On her back she wears a large satchel stuffed to overflowing. In her hand, the keys to a car she's leased only a week prior. Esme appears from behind me as if she's been placed by a divine hand, wished into existence. She steps around my frozen form and addresses Tanya, her hands on Tanya's shoulders. Motherly. Accepting. Proud. My mind zips at double speed but it all overlaps, a stream of consciousness, a rushing river, my thoughts pouring over the rocks too quickly to grasp, impossible to capture. I shouldn't have drank last night. I can feel the hangover deep within me. It's the thick kind, all hard edges and heavy bones. I try to stretch my neck, pop my joints into action. It's futile. I'm swimming in a fugue, six inches deep underwater, trying to decipher a story in which I don't know the language. In which I can't read the words.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Tucson," she says. She still calls me my city-name, my co-opted place not person what came first. She claims she can't get used to John, claims it sounds too formal, claims she's already learned me one way, as one type of person, as an entity unchanging. I don't confess my secret thoughts: how I hate that name now, hate the place it came from, hate the burning pavement and the oppressive sun and the air conditioning that makes noses dry and bloody.
"Tell me what?" I ask though I already know, I can see the outline before me, the inciting incident, the rising action, the climax and conclusion. I just didn't realize my character didn't live through to the end. I suppose we are all the protagonists on our own stories. But this isn't my story, it's her's.
"Tell you that I'm leaving. That I'm going to get a place out east. Virginia, I think. Closer to my family. Thanks to Esme and Carlisle I have a bit of money, a car. I think it could work out."
"But you don't talk to your family–" I protest, remembering her reminiscing of abrupt departures and lack of closure, of words spat and not taken back. Of siblings turned enemies and strangers turned friends.
"I was young then. I said things I didn't mean… so did they. It's time to grow up." She's speaking slowly, pedantic, a lecture to a small child who's done something naughty and must learn from their mistakes. But not too harshly; too harsh and the child may break.
"If you give me a few minutes to pack…" I trail off.
Esme looks uncomfortable, her face shifting.
"I need to go alone," Tanya says at the same time Esme says:
"You have a place here with us, John."
I whip pan between the two of them, a nearly comedic moment, a ding as my brain catches up to my body. As I realize what is happening. They've planned this and kept it from me.
"But why?" I ask, not bothering to hold back my emotion. I am beyond that now, beyond shielding what I feel for the sake of vanity or manliness or duty or dignity. I am here, locked to this kitchen, my hand on a cold glass of water that fizzles and snaps, the lights behind my eyelids doing the same. A firework, a cacophony. A roar of explosion as I am erased from the narrative.
Tanya steps toward me, her satchel sliding off her shoulders and landing on the floor with a thud. She places her hands on my skin, clammy from the night's unrest, one on my arm and one on my cheek. And I can't help it, can I? I can't help but sink into her touch. She sighs, head tilted to the side, cheeks rosy, flecks of gold in her eyes, her hair large and staticky, wavy not quite curly, not quite straight. Off to the side, Esme stands. But I can't see her. To me, there is no one else in the room. Tanya bites down on her bottom lip, eyes flickering left then right. Calculating what she wants to say, how she wants to say it. I keep myself from reaching out to her, know within me that that isn't the right move, not now, not at the breaking point. I keep myself sheathed and compact, though my fingers twitch to hold on, to clutch the only solid thing in my storm.
"You've helped me so much and I owe you everything for that," she says softly. Her lips outline her words; she speaks in cursive. "But I want more."
I try to take it on the chin. I really do. Her bedroom, now regressing back to guest bedroom, is empty. I lay beneath the covers, rumpling the perfectly made bed. I don't sleep. I watch the room grow darker around me. Esme knocks, leaves, knocks again. Brings tea. Carlisle comes in after his shift, peers through a crack in the door, stands gruffly attentive. The sheets smell like her and if I could I would bottle her perfume, I would bottle her perfume, I would bottle her perfume and wear it. I curl up on my side, feel myself grow heavier and heavier still. My body leaden, my skin slate. I sink. Through the bed, through the floor, through the crust of the earth. I am one with the earth and the earth is one with me.
I leave a hole in the house, a crater. Slip out through the back door in the dead of night once I hear the rumbling cadence of Carlisle's snores, the laugh track of a bedroom television set turned down low. I avoid the creaky stair. I take one last look around. I carry very little, a few sets of clothes, a handful of cash, tens and twenties, tips and change, a toothbrush still damp. I let my feet take me. I follow my ears. I am a hunter at night listening for the crunch, the snapped twig under my prey. It beckons. I walk and I walk. Houses like thumbprints, so similar yet different in their smallest details. A shrub. A light on upstairs. The bombastic bass of a passing car, teenagers, thick, heady pot smoke leaking out the cracked windows. It is tepid, the air. Like wading in a pond, ripples lapping around my legs. I trudge forward. Keep moving. Out of the neighborhood and onto a side street. Strip malls, closed for the night. Convenience store. Chain restaurant one, two, three. The blueprint of suburbia, echoing and echoing and echoing, a sound wave across the country built for the automobile.
I reach the highway, its swooping onramp. Its potential. Its undulant wave of possibility, the rising tide. The climb of the cars. The lanes of traffic, each vehicle a passing breeze. The scream of wind through branches.
With my left hand. That is what I will use to signal, to hitch.
x
The problem is my reflection. I can't get away from it. My eyes in the rearview mirror, tucked beneath the shade of my trusty cap. A nose, a cheekbone in the side mirror as I glance back to change lanes, curving over my shoulder to check my blind spot. The windows when it grows dark, within them a muted, abstract version of myself reflecting right back at me. My figure passing as I disembark to piss, to eat, to sleep, my outline on the shiny glare of the truck's cabin. My backgrounds are ever-changing, like a match cut in a stop motion film, a flip book where the main character doesn't move but his environment adapts around him. First peaceful, then chaotic, then nuclear, then peaceful again. The main character doesn't notice. He, a constant force.
The road is familiar to me. I break an average expense of 48 cents per mile, a new record. I drive through the night, hardly noticing the landscape. It rains and then stops. It storms and then stops. There are clouds and then there are no clouds. A moon. Waxing, waning, full, new. A whirling dust storm, the shriek of tornado warnings in the high desert flatlands. The skittering sound as dirt slams the side of the cargo, like rain but sharper. Lightning ignites the horizon in a blink of vibrance, just a breath of an illuminated world. And that's where I see Bella. When the land is colorful and bright.
She stands right there. Just so. Waiting for me on the dotted line. Blink and I've missed it. Too quick to even swerve, I drive right through the apparition. Splatter her into the road. Check my side mirror and it is only my cheekbone, my nose staring back at me. That, and the black, black road. I use the toggles to adjust the mirror. No longer safe, but my reflection is gone. Deleted. Cropped out. Erased. No one and everyone. Nothing but the road.
And still, I drive. Until the winter melts into spring, but there is still snow on the mountain passes. When I climb through them and swerve, rounding the weaving bends, threading the needle. Pushing the engine, riding my brake. I pass a lake and that's where I see Bella. Just before sunrise, when the land begins to grow colorful and bright. The pink and yellow and orange, all neon blasphemy made natural, cresting the tops of the mountains and causing that lake to glow. Hardly a wake, hardly a wave. Still as glass, that lake. Mountain runoff cut out of the trees, slammed into the earth, a divot from a meteor, pooling. I want to pull over. Take my hand off her eyes. Have you ever seen something like this? I ask her, the empty seat. Precious cargo no longer sat beside. I hold my breath for an answer that doesn't come.
I am careful when I return to Tacoma. I don't ask questions. I take my next route and I leave, sometimes while I am still on the road, still at the depot, still offloading or loading or waiting or sleeping. Carlisle emails me the stops, where to pick up, where to drop off. Motels and hotels. I wake up to the ping of a new message, my next route, somewhere between asleep and awake, that temporary place so similar to purgatory. Beneath the roof of the cabin not cabin, laying in my cubby not cubby beneath my sheets not sheets. I open my eyes and that's where I see Bella. Just before my awareness draws conclusive and permanent. Laying beside me, hand curled beneath her chin, breathing slow and steady, eyelids fluttering in sleep. I blink and it's over, moment gone, that's life.
It's summer. I take my coffee black's fine thanks. It's bitter and burns slightly, just the way I like it. I'm bleary-eyed and unfocused. The sun's only just set and the heat is cloying. I roll the windows down, my air conditioning weak and lackluster. The breeze helps, blowing through my hair too long, beneath my t-shirt too tight. As I climb the mountain pass, the air grows colder and colder. I leave the window open until I'm shivering, forced to close it. I am crisp and alert and it is near midnight. Summer. I don't expect it. The downhill shift, signs neon under the glow of my headlights. Steep gradient! Use caution! Trucks stay right! Falling rocks! Passing lane left! No passing! Steep gradient! Steep gradient!
I ride the brake, that rubbery, smoky smell. They catch and release. I am aware and focused, losing altitude, gaining speed. I press the brakes harder and now there is no catch, only release. A keening, crying sound. A screech of protestation, of metal on rim. I am going faster now, hazard lights flashing with a click, click, click. I keep the wheel steady. Curving around each bend. My cargo sliding left, right, left. Tilting at high speed. Knuckles white ten and two. Foot off the gas pedal. Hardly a barrier no turn offs. Just a thin guardrail, metal no match for me, I'd slice clean through it. My mouth is dry. Runaway truck ramp ahead! A sign, the words a blur. I'm accelerating and accelerating. There are few other cars. The ones that see me swerve and brake, let me pass. I see their headlights in my side mirror no nose no cheekbones no reflection. Be careful, I warn, buckle up. But there is no one in the passenger's seat thank God for that. I know I was never the devout child I was meant to be but thank you God, thank you God, thank you God. There's no precious cargo sat beside.
I wind another bend, careening recklessly. There is no stopping it now. I let the road take me, turn as wide as I can, honk my horn, blaring, blaring. My muscles are clenched tight, my speedometer rocketing. I test my brakes again and nothing! Nothing! May the odds be in my favor. Where is the ramp? Where? Another turn, hands on the wheel. A long straight away, the gravel churning beneath me. Do I clench my eyes? Do I lift my hands off the wheel? Do I let it take me? I close them, just for a moment. Just for a moment, I let go. And that's where I see Bella. Dancing in the bar in Portland, cheap lights flashing. I could kiss her then, sweaty temples. I could kiss her then. I could kiss her. I open my eyes and it's the road, wet with speed, now a river. A blur. In the distance, a shaft of uphill gravel, sand. I yank the wheel, tires thundering as I rocket off the road, jump into the catch-all at high speed. An earthquake of movement. All I can do is hold on and hope for stability. I'm climbing again. Climbing and climbing. Smoke around me, behind me. Engine protesting. I hold on. Just hold on.
It's quiet when the truck stops. The hiss of exhaust, the click of a dead engine. Crickets. Behind me, the cops have been called. Red and blue lights illuminating the darkness. I rest my forehead on the steering wheel, breathe deeply. Am I dead or alive? Did you see that? There is no answer. From my pocket, I unearth my cell phone hardly used. My hand is trembling. I shove it beneath my thigh, force it into submission. There are two bars of service. Just enough. The cops approach behind me, flashlights in hand. Carlisle on speed-dial, awoken from sleep, voice gruff.
"Edward?"
I swallow, cough. Force the words to come calmly, serenely. It's a moment before I'm able to ask:
"Is Bella there?"