Damiano
When people talked about watching the world from above, they solemnly meant a 15,000-pound beast of metal, rubber, and glass. Most of the time, their imagination brought to the front a dude in a pressed suit standing at the edge of the window of his skyscraper office, a smug grin playing across his face, as he closed his final deal for the day. The apparition of a sweaty guy in a dirty t-shirt with a collar chewed up from time and frequent washing in gas station bathroom sinks wouldn't plague their imagination. Yet Damiano observed the realm from his tower like a silent, forgotten deity. It was so different to be an almost unwilling participant in this world, and when he got to interact with people outside of the radio station, it felt strange and unsettling, like he was dethroned from his sacred guard duties.
The static's hiss filled the whole cabin, and he twisted the knob and turned on the radio, where Bon Jovi asked him to keep the faith with his melodramatic timbre. The sky outside was a heavy cinderblock of charcoal, ash, and carbon, bleeding into the asphalt's darkness. The weather has been a rollercoaster lately—tropical days with scorching mornings and humid afternoons that made him detour for an hour somewhere until the storm died down. The heavy sheets of rain made it impossible to see, and he had little choice but to pull over at the closest convenient place and wait it out. When the conditions were extremely poor, his radio refused to work as well, which made these pauses even more damning. With no one to talk to, no music, and no road to keep his mind and eyes busy, he was tossed back at the mercy of the jump scare that was his real life, and he almost pulled out the emergency Jack Daniels from under the passenger seat. Liquor was a slippery slope he desperately tried to stay on top of, knowing damn well that if he slid down, coming back up would be hell. So, he blackened his lungs instead, until the pack of Marlboros was just a shriveled ball in his hands that he squeezed and unsqueezed. He made a mental note that he should probably call his mom on his next stop.
It was threatening to rain today too; he could see in the distance the curtains of water over the hills. He was just outside of Beavertown, and he had some more time until his time was up on his driving log and he would need to stop for a break and to get some sleep. The closest place to his location was a Circle K near Salem, where he would spend the afternoon lounging in the back of the cabin where his small bed was and reading a cheap, dirty book about a suburban mom who was cheating on her husband with her kids' tennis couch. He picked up this incredible work of Western literature from a gas station in Washington because the cashier looked at him funny while Damiano was browsing the newspaper stand. He was going to buy just today's paper that had the gruesome news on the front cover and maybe something to smoke and eat. However, the look on the heavyset kid with a pimply face that resembled with its roundness and terrain the light side of the moon felt somehow knowing, and Damiano reached for the first token of heterosexuality in his vicinity. Which happened to be this book with a busty woman on the cover, clutched in the embrace of a muscular man with a shirt that scarcely covered any of his upper body. Damiano wasn't into extremely toned guys, but this image could be decent jerk-off material in the absence of another, more explicit one, so he happily paid for the paper, the book and whatever random, processed junk was in his basket, and was on his merry way, feeling that he had accomplished deceiving a person he would probably never see again.
As soon as he was out the door and into his truck, he pulled over on the gas station parking lot and consumed the content of the first and second pages of the print like it was holy communion.
"Third body found on Route 101," said the first page with stocky letters, and a picture of a patch of highway that was nowhere near Route 101 was plastered under the text. The article that followed on the next page was nothing short of unenthusiastic and bland, with little detail and even less fervor. It read like the author gave up midway through but needed to meet the word quota for the day, so he or she kept writing. Not an ounce of compassion could be extracted from the short segment; it was as cold and impersonal as a declined sign on a cash register or a positive on an HIV test. Damiano felt the urge to tear the paper into pieces and stuff it down his throat. Instead, he screamed into the fragrant, ink-stinking page, threw it on the ground under the driver's seat, and stomped on it with his muddy running shoes. A day later, he would throw it out into a bin near Portland with the remnants of a whole pack of wet cigarettes, a wrapper from a Mars bar, a galore of receipts, and a used condom wrapper.
Circle K was unusually full for that time of day, and he had to wait for the line of cars in front of him to fill up on gas, so Damiano decided to move his truck to the side and buy lunch or dinner or whatever meal he skipped today and was on the agenda in the mart. He got a hotdog, a Coke, a coffee, and a pack of cigarettes, then sat outside on the metal benches, where a family of five was joyfully having a snack on the table next to him. The mom passed the sandwiches from a seemingly bottomless bag to the kids. Two boys and one girl of various ages. The children were so well-behaved and polite that Damiano smiled to himself. If it were him and Jacopo, there would be pushing, screaming, and spitting, and his mom's face would be red from embarrassment and yelling. In times like this, he felt the regret of being a bad son the most. He and his brother were unruly kids, propelled in their mischief by the lack of a steady father figure. When their dad was back home from a flight, he preferred to relax away from his sons in the garage. And when he was at work, thousands of miles away, he was uncontactable for days. Damiano frequently was fighting with the realization that involuntarily he was turning into him, but thankfully, he had no kids, just a stray cat that took care of itself when he was away. Were he and Jacopo little strays, too, then?
Damiano bit on the edge of the hotdog, trying to make it as less phallic-looking as possible, and tasted the ancient grease coating the roof of his mouth. He would be having a field day with his upset stomach later; he just knew it. His eyes grazed the magazine stand inside, looking for developments in the case, but it was just the regular Clinton bullshit and not much else.
When he was done with the hotdog and the Coke, he took the cold coffee to his truck and climbed up, holding the cup's edge between his teeth as he ascended the stairs and slammed the door shut. He pulled the curtains and stretched on the bed, feeling his joints screaming with pleasure. His lower back almost sighed with relief at the new position. Damiano turned on the radio and looked for the channel Thomas was on.
"Missed me?" the familiar voice asked, and Damiano grinned.
"Not one bit. You are so annoying!" he responded. "I can't believe you are my best friend."
"Yeah, it's hard for me to believe it either. Where are you?"
Damiano groaned. "Near Salem. You?"
"I just arrived in LA. I am going to unload, and I am going home for a long day of sleep."
"You are leaving me on my own devices? This can't be legal!"
Thomas' laugh overtook the cabin. "I am pretty sure I should be sued for allowing you to be unsupervised, but it's a risk I am willing to take."
"Very irresponsible of you, if you ask me!" Damiano swallowed a yawn.
"Go to sleep!" Thomas instructed him, and Damiano didn't protest. He was groggy. As soon as his exhausted lids shut, he heard the tapping of the first raindrops on top of the roof and the windshield. He allowed the rhythm to lull him away to the land of dreams, one arm under the pillow, the other stretched out to hold the baseball bat next to the cot.
In the morning, when he went out to use the restroom, wash his face, and pits in the gas station bathroom sink with cold water and pearlescent liquid soap that resembled someone's spunk, he avoided the thought that he should call his mother.
When he filled up the gas and paid for it along with his breakfast, water, and some Pepto-Bismol, he pushed the thought away again. And when he was safely inside his cabin, he felt free from the clawing duty.
