Ethan
"Hey, can I bum a cigarette, handsome?" The long-limbed creature that looked like a fawn whispered in her foreign accent. It wasn't Spanish; Ethan knew many Mexicans and quite a bit of their language to notice the tinge of their speech; it was something rarer and more exotic for this part of the country. She was wearing nothing but a short nightgown that framed the silhouette underneath perfectly, like one of those Roman sculptures he saw in the expensive subscription encyclopedias in his friends' houses as a kid. His household didn't have the means to fund his curiosity and thirst for knowledge with lustrous books that came in the mail in thick cardboard boxes that his mother hoarded, acting like she didn't pick them up from the trash in the wealthier neighborhoods on her way back from work. As if having these boxes in her possession would somehow elevate her lifestyle to its previous status.
"Sure." Ethan pulled the package from the back of his booty denim shorts and offered her a cancer stick.
"Luna," she introduced herself, sounding more boyish now. Her looks were positively androgynous, much like his. But where he relied on his long hair to present more feminine, his new acquaintance was all mixed up and matched exactly right, so you would be confused if you weren't presented with her soft breasts that peaked under the sheer fabric.
"Ethan," he replied, shaking her hand in a too-formal manner for such a chance encounter.
"Yeah, I know. I've seen you around. I know Victoria. She told me about you. She said not to trust any other bitches but you." Luna grinned and produced a thin ribbon of fragrant, heavy smoke through her lips.
"Well, this is the highest compliment anyone can expect from Vic, I guess." Ethan chuckled.
"Not much luck today, huh?" Luna stated, pointing out that it was early afternoon and they were both free. Usually, at this time of day, most truckers were retiring for an early dinner and an evening of pleasure at the motel. The food in the diner wasn't the best, but it was cheap, as were the rooms. For the price of $19.90, you get an ocean view on top of everything else. Ethan loved this stop precisely for the picturesque view and its proximity to Lincoln Beach. Besides, Leo, the manager of the motel, was sweet on him and allowed him to crash in the rooms for free whenever there was a room available. For the price of a blowjob or a quicky in the backroom, he got a week of free rent and sometimes lukewarm, watered-down coffee. When Leo was extremely charitable, he would throw in some of the leftover food from breakfast, although "food" was a very broad name for a prepackaged bread roll, a container of foul, plastic dough strawberry jam, and a brown banana. But beggars can't be choosers, right?
Sometimes, when Ethan was in his dreamy mood, he would imagine owning one of the houses on the beach, having a dog, and watching the sunset from the back porch as the sun set over the cerulean sea. His fantasies always included water or a vast, empty space like a forest clearing or a desert dune. A place where he could see the horizon and not the outlines of someone else's trailer. Living in a trailer park was very similar to being stuck in a constant traffic jam. The vehicles weren't moving, angry shouts were coming from everywhere, and the air was stuffy and smelling like fast food. For some reason, there was always a baby crying somewhere. This is how he developed this primal need for the outdoors, for the empty spaces, the longing to be living in a vacuum where nothing but light can touch him. No distant sound of a domestic fight getting violent, no fussy toddlers having tantrums, and no nagging stepfathers. Okay, the last one was a personal issue. Probably. Maybe?
"It's Sunday," Ethan concluded, and Luna gave him the wildest, most bewildered look.
"So? Men don't fuck on Sundays, or what?"
"No, I guess... I don't know." Ethan realized too late that it was probably the religious trauma that was renting the free space in his mind for no charge, rather than some bizarre coronation between Sunday mass and men not engaging in sinful behaviors.
"Are you having a bad trip? Did you get shrooms from that bearded guy who looked a little bit too much like Jesus?" Luna asked, checking for signs of intoxication.
"Hah, nope. I don't do drugs. Except for the occasional joint." Ethan shrugged. He had many, many occasions to experiment with whatever was the latest trend on the market, because, let's be honest, the loneliness made those men on the road crazy, and they were constantly on the hunt for something to take away the sorrow, the pain, or the boredom. But he heard the drug talk from his mom way too frequently to be scared for life, yet this wasn't the reason he didn't partake in these activities. The thing that put him off drugs was the live example that arrived seemingly every week in the trailer next door, toothless, unwashed, raggedy, and swaying like a decaying scarecrow. Couples, singles, large families. He had seen them all. Rotting from the inside, their veins, their lungs, and their minds were poisoned by the forbidden bliss of chemical heaven, where there was no pain.
"Good for you! Keep it up! You are too pretty to be ruined by drugs." Luna patted him on the shoulder and gave him a friendly but sad, grim look, which read like an admission that she wasn't as clean as Ethan was.
Two large balls of lightning illuminated the gloomy area, and Ethan saw a red truck pulling up next to the motel, lured by the neon promise of vacancy. An older man in a jumpsuit descended the steps of the metal beast and looked around. He wasn't that interested in the motel, after all, because his eyes were searching and immediately landed on him and Luna, sitting on the bench in front of the building.
"You a girl?" the truck driver asked, nodding at Luna, sounding positively Neanderthalic.
"I can be whatever you want me to be, Daddy," she stated, swaying her hips in a mating dance under the beat of non-existent music.
"I asked, Are you a girl, whore? Do you have a pussy? If you don't, skedaddle!" He irrupted, each word turning his face redder and more bull-like.
"Yes, I am," Luna replied, depleted by the barrage of insults, and grinned at the customer who was walking towards the reception of the motel after he waved her to follow him.
"Good luck," Ethan muttered after her while she was picking up her luggage bag and her coat from under the bench.
"Take care of yourself, Peaches. And be careful; there is a maniac out there! He killed three of us already." She said and leaned to place a kiss on his cheek and showed him the little knife tucked in the side pocket of her bag. He was bathed in her milky, innocent aroma, which reminded him of the school trip to a dairy farm and the meadow behind it, spackled with little bruises of violet clusters.
Up until this point, the murders were just a rumor he heard scattered in the words of passersby. It sounded like nothing serious, and no one else he met talked outright about it, but Luna's warning left him frozen for a good five minutes, his scrambled brain searching for a lever to pull him out of the deep end of his pool of survival instincts that were screaming to him to get away and go back home to the run-down trailer with a leaky roof that hosted a weekly intervention about him led by his stepdad and witnessed by the jury of his mother and siblings.
"I need to use your phone." Ethan's right hand was already behind the counter of the reception when Leo mumbled the weakest "no" ever uttered and raised his hands in defeat, seeing that his protest would do little to persuade Ethan not to use his work phone for personal calls.
Ethan dialed the number he remembered by heart and could cite in his sleep, and he waited for an answer from the other side of the line. It rang and rang until a sleepy voice coming from what sounded like the depths of the seventh circle of hell groaned, "Hello?"
"Vic! Hey, Vic!"
"Ethan? Why are you calling so early?" The girl asked, yawning.
" Early? It's the afternoon!" Ethan sighed, feeling a bit guilty for waking Victoria.
"Yeah? So? I work nights."
"Sorry, sorry, I forgot. I just wanted to tell you I met Luna, and I am on my way. And...I needed to hear someone familiar's voice." He caught himself a second before he started bawling and biting his lip.
"Oh, there, there. Soon you will be in LA, and we will be together, having the time of our lives. I finally have a steady gig at a small club downtown, and I am making decent money. They are looking for bartenders; you can apply." Vic said, and Ethan felt a little better.
"Yeah, I could do that. I could get a second job and" The wave of sadness was washing over him, and he barely held it at bay. "Listen, I got to go. Thank you for this. I am sorry I woke you up." Ethan hung up the phone and stumbled out of the reception with a few excuses for Leo, too.
