Turn the Page

Bryon Spencer

I.

            Everyone’s fork falls to their plate into a dead silence as the door wrenches and jingles shut behind you. Everyone’s turned their attention to the silhouetted figure standing under the bell. Not one of their faces isn’t looking you dead straight in the eye, and you can just how welcome the road feels.
            Your first impression is to back out, never look back, to never say anything, but instead you shake the dust off your shoulders and make your way to the back of the room. Their accusations press against your back all the way to the furthest window booth on the far end of counter.
            The plastic cracks beneath you, dried from the sun beating through the diner windows. You hide behind a menu, not deciding on what to order but pretending it doesn’t bother you, pretending that you’re welcome.

            The leaves two stories down race through the dimming light of the street lamps. Adrian Castro watches them from the window in his apartment kitchen, pours a simple drink, hard scotch, ice, sipping the first and last days kick, remembering what she said and trying to forget.
            Three times, he thinks to himself.
            He’d thought it was gone. Things were going good; they’d stay perfect for once, twenty or so years. Thought he’d fixed the problem or that he was getting old; that he’d gotten over it. Time after time though, he’d thought the same. Three times, he thinks to himself, takes a sip, and there was going to be a forth.
            He closes the bathroom door gently behind him, not to wake her, and runs the faucet to splash his face, rubbing away his eyes and an old weathered face, better off not returning the glance to the mirror. He notices the feathered streaks of silver run above his ears and how he could notice the slight sag in his face regardless of how long it’s been since he’d shaved.
            He pulls open the glass cabinet to take down a bottle of pain killers. Struggling with the cap he can feel his blood pumping harder and faster, testosterone ups. He loses it and smashes his fist into the mirror. How this could have happened, he thinks to himself.
            Sweetie? Her voice echoes through the door.
            Yea. He pauses and says respectfully, I’m alright.
            Come to bed.
            Three times. He cautiously pulls his fist back, as to not let any broken glass fall and make more noise. The mirror’s cracked along the – So, What’ll it be? – edge but he sees bottle’s broken open. He takes a small handful, four maybe five, and puts the bottle back in the cabinet and then leans his head against the mirror, taking deep breaths, waiting for his blood pressure to drop back down.
            She’s fallen back asleep, half naked and draped over his side of the bed. He keeps quiet and slides open the closet. It’s difficult to see what he pulls down without a light, but feels around until he finds it. He pulls down a empty leather worn shoulder back, water stained and smells old, andpulls it over his shoulder.
            Where are you going? She almost seems to slur from her half dazed sleep.
            I’ll be right back. Go back to sleep.
And as you close the mirrored closet, you catch a glimpse of him in your reflection.

            I said, what’ll it be?                  
            You fumble and drop your menu, shaken. The waitress, she stands tall and looks down on you with the blood rushing to your face and your heart beating through your ears. What’ll it be, not sure how to take it or what she means, What’ll it be?
            Just coffee, you manage to get out.
            She scribbles on her notepad and walks off repeating to herself Just Coffee under her breath. Deep breaths help slow the heart.
            Everyone’s turned their attention away back to the television and to their own affairs, an occasional glance, but one. He sits at a table across from you, never breaking eye contact or looking away, not from the moment you stepped it. You turn back away towards your menu because the man makes you feel uneasy. You still feel him watching you, though.
            You’re coffee.
Her name tag says Judith and she’s the prize model of a rest stop waitresses in heels too tall to comfortably wait in. She wears her red hair tight back in a bun and looks as if she was once the county beauty queen but now she stares at the world through these dust painted diner windows with paper wrinkled eyes.
She puts it down hard enough to make the glass shout, slopping some over the rim onto the table.  She looks down at you with a sarcastic smile as she turns and disappears again back behind the counter.
            Cream vanishes into darkest depths and explodes into a carnation back to the surface over the first cup of coffee of the day. An outback bred accent shouts from every direction Hey, turn it up, and the once muted volume on the county’s local news cast echoes into a vibrating voice of the breaking news story deafening throughout the diner. You look over your shoulder and you see Judith behind the counter holding up the remote but still deep in her magazine.
            If you’ve been watching this broadcast or even picked up a newspaper this morning you would have seen one thing, Murder, the most violent and obscene murder to gruesome to show on television. On scene we have Natasha Cordley. Natasha? 
The television jumps to the scene of the crime.  
            Yes Tom, I’m here. As you can see behind me, the police have the house completely fortified. They’re not letting anyone in or out. They haven’t given any official statement, but the rumors are flying that a man murdered his wife and infant children.
            Natasha, do the police have a suspect yet?
            Like I said Tom, the police haven’t released an official statement yet. But a neighbor in question claims he saw the husband drive off in a blue sports car.
            What kind of car?

            You’re attention is placed back to the coffee, filtering everything as white noise. You’d rather just not know.
           
            Hey, boy. The man who’d been glaring at you, now standing at the end of the booth, no different… Mind if I sit here? He sits quick across from you and stares directly into you’re eyes. He looks out the window and turns back to you’re eyes.
            Say, that’s a nice car you got there.
            He’s frail and old, older than you, and you’re pushing years. He pauses and says Pretty color. Blue’s my favorite. His hair is pulled tight back into a ponytail, grayed thin and stringy with a handlebar down over his upper lip.
            Say, where are you from?
He’s got no meat on his bones. Practically visible through his loose spotted skin.
            Hey, you deaf boy? You look dead into his eyes, eyes grayer than his hair, bottomless. You dumb? They’re fixed and filled with fury. He exposes his stained teeth to you and tongues and sucks the bits of his lunch out from between them. He looks past you over at the television and tilts his head in its direction.
            They say that that husband is going this way. He pauses and looks back at you. You wouldn’t know anything about that would you, boy?
The blood rushes back to fill your head, starts to lift off you’re shoulders, struggling to keep yourself from passing out when you realized you haven’t been breathing.
            Pretty cold blooded, think? He pauses. I have a boy, older now, and he got too many to count.
You have trouble regulating the time a breaths and it gets warm. Shoot, he got so many, he probably lost count. Different states at different times, ya’ know? Sweat starts beading down the inside of arms and along your forehead and your fists clench and your jaw tightens to the point of feeling like your teeth are about to shatter.
            What about you? You got a son?
You sit and don’t show your pain, stare into his eyes with a emotionless stoic presence, not making a move. It wouldn’t be hard, he’s frail looks almost deathly. He’ll never see it coming-.
            Shiiiit. What’s wrong with you? I’m just makin’ friendly talk.
-but you don’t dare make your stand. Your eyes shut but the light beaming through the glass illuminates the inside of your lids so all you’re seeing is a thick orange haze.
            Breathe in.

            Exhale.
            Your eyes take time to adjust from the glare through the window but when they come to, he’s gone. The parking lot is empty and unchanged and everyone’s attention is still placed to the television screen. You wonder if anyone else saw him.
            His whereabouts are still unknown, says the on scene reporter.
The mornings’ first sip of coffee is cold; decide it best to leave what’s left and get back on the road. You open your wallet and see the trucker with the green hunters cap looks back over his at your booth. He sees you make eye contact and quickly changes his glance. You leave a couple dollars and wedge up out of the booth. As you make your way to the exit you feel everyone’s eyes back upon you. You look the waitress in the eyes. In an instant she looks back towards the ground.
The door jingles again as you walk through and you hear the newscaster say the police urge anyone who comes across this man to keep a distance, he may be armed and dangerous.
You let go of the handle and the door closes behind you.

II.
                                    
            The air smells like dusts picked up from the slight breeze that chills the sweat off the back of your neck. An overly bright day; the sun pounds down through a cloudless sky and heat waves snake up through the lot of the empty station. You can feel your face turn red and know you need a cigarette.
            You light up and bring it up to the cigarette kissed between your wetted lips. Caffeine pumps your veins and your heart beats increase; take your first hit.
            Their eyes still following you from across the street, the waitress probably ran off to call the police. So, you fill up, pay cash, and get back in the car. Never look back.

            On the road, miles pass between you and the diner, not that it matters. You turn up the radio just enough to hear over the passing cars and breaking wind.
            ---just been sighted, driving west on highway--- You turn the knob but all the other stations comes in static and turn it off completely.
            Something in your pocket sticks into the side of your leg, has been for the past fifty miles. It’s a couple more mies of distant black road before you decide to adjust it. You fish it out, his zippo. You click it open and close, open and close, open and close, staring at it.

            Stop it! She tells Craig Hesse.
             Tina forcefully snatches the lighter out from his hand and he looks up at her gentle naked shoulders, her unnaturally red hair tied back. He always thought she wore too much lipstick and eye shadow, and that he nails were inches to long. But did she have a pair of legs, like thorns in your dreams.
            What? He asks mildly annoyed, cigarette still kissed between his lips.
            I have to get ready for class. She’s topless and was wears a pair of his shorts. Try not to burn the apartment down. She tosses the lighter onto the bed hard enough bounce up and into the wall. We just got it.
            Hey, careful with that. He stretches to lean over the bed to retrieve the lighter, inspecting it to make sure it’s all intact. It’s old, he tells her, but she doesn’t care and disappears into the next room.
            He met her while disco was king and to her it was no different. He didn’t go to the bar looking for love or lust, just for a reason to have a drink. She was there talking up free drinks from the bartender. Too many drinks later, the two of them were living together. She’d been his first.
She comes back in holding Tyler against her bare chest, lucky kid he thinks to himself , and sits him down beside him on the bed,and closes the bathroom door behind her. Where’d ya get that anyway?, she asks from the next room
            I don’t remember. He’d found the lighter in an old tattered case he’d stumbled across, but he knows this. Just after he left, you snuck into his room, while she was out on one of her business appointments. It was in the closet; old weathered leather practically cracking to the touch. You loosen the leather straps from their bronze clasp and flipped the top open. It was empty with the exception from the lighter and a half empty pack of cigarettes.
            Tye stare’s blankly up at the ceiling fan, spinning slow enough just to barely feel a draft, fascinated from what he can’t possibly comprehend yet kicks his legs with excitement. Craig watches him, uncomfortably. He feels he needs to find a new place to site. Tye wasn’t his.
            I’m outta here, she comes out and puts her purse over her shoulder. Watch him, okay? Tyler watches her go out the door as she walks right by. Tyler starts to get upset and starts to cry. The door doesn’t shut until after he’s started.
            He’s not sure of what to do, so he flips his zippo open and close, open, close. The metal flick gets his attention, and tries to grab for it.
            He blows it out and lets him grasp it, shut him up.

            The constant horn of a rapidly approaching oncoming car breaks your stream of though; time slows to minutes passing per stitch of the secondhand and a permanent picture of the oncoming drivers expression, face to face with his fate, embeds itself in your eyes.
            Frozen.

            He waited till she’d gotten home, long after “class” was out. She’d been drunk, it was easy and you wouldn’t wait any longer…

            Are you alright?
            You come back too and realize you’re still gripped to the wheel and you wonder what just happened and why you’re on the side of the road. Your breaths are shaken and your shoulders collapse in time. You look up and watch her mouth words. You’re not sure of what she’s said but you make out Stoned in a muzzled tone and you can’t tell if it’s a question or not.
She hangs over the side of the car to try and see if your pupils are dilated and she nearly falls out of her sweat soaked tank. Every urge tells you to move that much away in opposite direction and not return the glance. Nope, not stoned, just absent minded. Her eyes are gray and her hair short and unnaturally red, like Sarah’s, tucked back behind her ears. She tosses her shoulder bag into the back seat and hops over the door and positions herself in the passenger seat. She’s young and naïve, not yet old enough to drink but she carries herself like she can hold her vodka well.
            So, Where are you headed?
            You can still smell the musk of sweat that misted through the hotel room.
            Out west, you reluctantly tell her under your breath. California.
She looks back into the back seat.
            You didn’t pack anything. All you have is this old ratty case. She picks it up and puts it in her lap. What’s in it? She loosens the leather strap from the bronze clasp and flips the top open. Her eyes grow larger and the expression on her face draws a blank; you’re not sure if she disgusted, confused, or ecstatic. 
            What is it?

            She tries and makes basic chit-chat, Where are you from, what do you do, nice car, but never gets much of an answer.

            Dusk. Hours pass and the day goes slower on the road in silence. A distance in separation has been formed with the stranger you picked up less than---
            You check your watch.
            --- forty minutes ago. You know she’s had something on her mind, but too timid to ask.
            Your finger, she says. There’s a tan line. Were you married?
You glance down and hide your hand beside your seat; a bead of sweat leaves a wet trail down your side.
            Christ, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just you haven’t said almost anything. You look over at her and see the tears gathering above her cheeks. I always do this. She hides her face between her hands in her lap. Muzzled in a sobbing voice you’re barely able to make out: I just never know when to shut up.
You change hands to place your arm over her back as if to rub it, but, think twice and let it hover over her for a minute before pulling it back to the wheel. Feel the muscles, being cramped behind of the wheel of a car for the majority of the day and night, stretch as you reach across and unlatch the glove box. You reach in and pull out a pack. You kiss one between your lips and pull the pack away. A familiar flint, you raise the flame and inhale.
            Hey. She looks up with black smudged eyes. The cigarette’s dry and sticks to your lips and you pass it to her. She snatches it like an addict. Forget it. It’s nothing, you tell her.
She wipes the tears with her sleeve. I’m sorry, she tells you.
            Don’t worry about it, not even a sensitive subject. You pause. I just don’t like talking about it.  
            The taste of the tobacco and paper rumors on your tongue, behind and between your teeth and need it to stay. You reach and take it back, one last breath before you quit, and you hand it back. The taste lingers, not wanting it to leave again.
She inhales and blows the smoke through her nose, stares at the cigarette clasped in her grip.
You check your watch; three minutes since you last checked the minutes pass. She leans over to tune the radio but you turn it off as quickly as she turned it on.
            No radio, you tell her.
She turns away, pouts like a child. You imagine she’ll tell you she hates you any minute now under her breath. But, she just fingers the tanned upholstery staring out into the diagonal flats of carefully placed trees. She flips down the passenger sun shade but finds no mirror. She exhales long and hard, flips the shade back up and adjusts the rounded rear view mirror to look at herself, with what little light is left.
            A part of you wants to know what she’s doing out here, hitchhiking through a desert, a part of you doesn’t really care.
            So, why are you going to California, she asks after puckering her lips. Doesn’t she know it’s dangerous?
You grab the cigarette again and take one last hit and don’t answer.
            REST STOP – 27 MILES          

III.
           
            Mosquitoes and moths flock toward flesh colored light from the one working streetlamp. The lot is empty with the exception of an old Charger grayed from the lamp and the hazed reflection of two or three trucks on the other end of the lot.
            She jumped out in search for the nearest vending machine.
            The neon Vacancy sign hums and flickers below the unlit sign: Desert Rest Motel.
            The shadow of man leans against the brick wall of the main office. He watches you make your way from the car all the way to the door. You glance up at him as you pull the door open; the glow from his cigarette lights the wrinkles of his face. No one place to be, no one to have, nothing to have, like an old gun slinger, a real nomad. He wears a patch and stares back at you with his one familiar eye.

            The ceiling fan spins slow enough to follow, just enough to feel a draft. The main office smells like polished metal, dust, and day old pancakes. Plastic tropical plants in the corner gather dust. You stand on marbled linoleum. The bell hop sits behind the counter hunched over with his back to you and watches the television for breaking news.
            You drop your bag on the counter to make some noise and stand there for a minute or two before ringing the bell. It dings and he peers over his shoulder and turns back to his television. There’s a few brief moments before he lifts himself up out of his chair and faces the counter.
            Fifty bucks a night, his face croaks, weathered from years spent behind the bottle. His hair’s silver and combed over his bald spots.
            You begin to open your wallet. Cash, he interruptswith one eye squinted and set on you.
            You drop a hundred on the counter and the clerk slides it off the counter into his grasp. He licks his finger and counts it slowly murmuring under his breath. He looks back up at you and pockets the cash.
            He grabs a key off the wall except when he turns back around you see the old man from the diner earlier. A single blink later he’s back as the clerk. He drops the key on the counter. Just tired.
            Twenty Seven.
            You pocket the key.
            Back out the door and to the left. It’s near the end.
He turns back to his television. You grab your bag and turn back towards the door but just as you begin to push the door, he continues:
            Better lock your door, he tells you.
            You let go of the handle and the door winces shut.  

            The neon red changes from fifty nine to double zero’s; midnight. It’s been to long of a day to feel tired, but your eyes ache and it hurts more to rest.
            What are you going to do when you get to… where are you going again? She asks.
She’s half asleep, rubbing and hanging herself off your side, laying awake in bed watching a series of television shows ranging from the best knives money can buy to getting the workout your legs truly need. You take your time to figure out how to answer.
            Haven’t given it thought.
            She raises her head with confused eyes.
            Why are you running out west then?
You sit up, causing her to flop over onto the bed and reach for your pack. Flick and light, inhale and blow smoke through your nostrils. You shake your head.
            Well, is it business? Is it  friends, fami—
            Nobody! You snap back.
            She rests her head on the pillow for a couple minutes, beating the pillow with her fists until she seems to think she’s comfortable, eventually turns over onto her other side, back towards you.
            Why Los Angeles? You ask.
She curls herself up into a fetal position teetering off the edge of the flowered sheets and you can feel she’s been hurt.
            Will you turn on the television? She asks, though it’s already on.
            What do you want to watch?
            She doesn’t answer or look up to watch and you figure she just needs it for the sound. She never answers your question.
            You flip around for few minutes, continuously circling the six, seven channels you have to choose from. Mostly half hour infomercials of how to loose weight faster by taking this pill and Knives that never need sharpening. He filets a fish steak as blue fire melts light wax.
            She doesn’t respond, but she’s fallen fast asleep in a bed with someone she’s known less than half a day.

            Vincent Gray was still young, late twenties, early thirties; just past his prime but still good shape, saw Sarah as just as quick as he got off the bus.
            He was walking up the steps with nothing but his father’s bag up around his torso, up to his new empty apartment. She wore a floral yellow, color yellow of lemons and sunflowers, silk sundress. Her hair was pulled back tight, and her eyes were fixed behind thick framed glasses buried in a book, The Bell Jar. She was coming down the steps not really paying attention to where she was going. She looked up and they exchanged glances, but only for a moment.
            They formally met four days later in the cramped elevator, both going down.
            You just moved into 401, right? They hit it off. Composing of only one third of the total number of occupants in the building, they ran into each other quite often.
            Wha’do you do? He asked over doing laundry. They worked their schedules to do laundry at the same time. She wouldn’t give a straight answer.
            One night, after one of those longer days at work, he stumbled to where she worked. She was a dancer, danced for dollars; she called herself Cleo. It completely caught him off by surprise. He’d figured she’d been a librarian, or a school teacher. She taught him, looks can be deceiving. But, he didn’t care either way, the dancing didn’t bother him in the least bit. In fact, he felt lighter, more relieved than anything else.
            Paid the rent, she would explain to him over a cup of coffee the next day.   It wasn’t long before they were spending nights in one another’s bed. Coffee?, is how it would usually start out. They’d meet up in the café three blocks down at night whenever they weren’t working. Sometimes they’d order coffee, White Chocolate Mocha is what she usually ordered, sometimes actual drinks.
            He’s play dumb games in his head while laying awake at night holding Sarah in his arms, feeling her bareness breathing against him. He’d try and guess what cup size she was or how many days had it been since he shaved; 36C, he’d concluded. He felt like a kid again around her. Life doesn’t get much better than this, he’d think to himself.
            He loved her; he knew this.
            He asked her to move in with him just weeks later. She didn’t have much of a choice; she had been replaced at work and couldn’t make rent, though under any circumstances she still would have considered. She’d always told him that he made her feel safe, that no matter what happened, she knew he’d be there for her. Two weeks later, he stumbled upon the ultrasound; a ---

            You can get this amazing deal for just three low monthly payments of twenty nine, ninety five.
            You jump up half out of a hazed slumber. Sitting up in bed, not sure of where you are or what’s happening; not sure if you’re awake or still asleep.
            There’s a gentle glow from the television selling the infomercial you’d wished you were only dreaming. A brightly cheerful woman with perfect hair and perfect teeth and a misshapen head won’t stop smiling, painfully sobbing, convinced you’re still dreaming, you let your lids slowly close again.
            Fuck…shit…
            Rubbing your eyes feels like the stretch after a good work out, but it hurts to sit up. Try and make a stretch over to handle the remote from the bedside table but when you pick it up but it’s heavier than you’d figured it’d be and almost drop it, fumble to hit the green power button.

            You push open the bathroom door slowly and see she’d curled herself up onto the porcelain sink, black streams of mascara smear under and around her eyes where she’d been rubbing and wiping, the tracks running between her theighs, like a clown of a child’s nightmare. Pitiful how she tries to find a place to hide the needle, but you’re not sure if she even notices you standing in the doorway watching her. 
Awkward and speechless standing in the doorway, both silent for a couple seconds just looking into each others faces. She gives you an exhausted relaxed smile, imagine she feels like she just woke up, and runs her fingers through her hair.
            You’re heart breaks, like waking from a terrible dream; you tell her, I’m sorry, like you’ve failed.
            Why are you apologizing? And starts laughing hysterically followed by more crying.
You rub your eyes and pull and stretch the skin, like a sharp sandpaper.
            I don’t know, you tell her. You whisper to yourself under your breath again, I don’t know.

            You look left and you look right, east and then west, crossroads.
            There’s but the short length of black road in either direction under the dismal yellow light. You light the last smoke of the night, the first smoke of the morning, pull open the car door, get comfortable, drop your bag on the passenger seat, and start the engine.

IV.

            Your breath blooms and swirls off into the wisps of the chilling morning air watching out over greener plains, listening to the gasoline slowly fuel into your tank. Further out, hundreds of miles into the distance, black mountains silhouetted by the blinding white sky of an unseen sunrise. It’ll be the first sunrise he’d seen since he’d can’t recall, but waits with much anticipation.
           
            Jake Robert Heaves II, his Christian name, the name he’d been born with, the name that’d been passed down, remembers the day he left. It’d been a Saturday, when he’d usually get a breakfast of his choice, but ended up going hungry that morning.
            He was six and thought of the weekend he’d been told they were going to have. He’d been gone for a long time, forever, he’d told himself. But nobody had seen him, or come looking for him more than half way through the day. He’d been outside, paying by himself, but not going far, trying to find activities to distract him from the yelling that’d been going on most of the morning. He’d see neighbors look away and pretend they didn’t hear the accusations and the furious abuse cracking back and forth.
            There was a crash, breaking glass, then, dead silence, the whole neighborhood went silent.
            The door smashed open, and slammed shut behind him before Jake could turn and see his father, carrying his leather work bag, what he’d taken with him everywhere. . He strode toward the mint pick-up as if he were late.
            Jake cried out --- Dad!
            Don’t call me that, is what he told him.

            You come to and the sun has already made itself known well above the ridge of the mountain tops.   

            Years later, when he was eighteen, Jake had tracked him down. He was standing outside his new home, with his new wife, when a kid, a girl, no older than four, came bursting out of the front door screaming with laughter. That’s when he decided he best not. He gave up.
            As he turned away, he noticed the same leather case, more cracked and weathered by time, in a pile of junk to be thrown out with the garbage.

            You turn the radio scanning for anything and stick to---the chase ended late last night, and the suspect has been taken into custody. No names have as yet been released. For the latest breaking news, stay for the top of the hour---and then the station turns back to classic and a song you know starts to play---

            On a long and lonesome highway, east of Omaha, you can listen to the engines moaning out its one note song, you can think about the woman, or he girl you knew the night before. But your thoughts will soon be wondering the way they always do, when you’re riding sixteen hours, and there nothing much to do. You don’t feel much like riding, you just wish the trip was through. Say here I am, on the road again---

            ---You stop and start humming the chorus as you come towards the state line, Welcome to California, the golden state. The sign looks like a time capsule in itself from your childhood; Sunshine and palm trees, hot cars and fast women. Hope you enjoy you’re visit, the sun tells you.
            Hope---you think to yourself and say out loud to hear the words off your lips---Hope.
            He looks down at your father’s worn leather bag.
            Trent Hope---he likes the sound of that.

There I go, turn the page.