CHAPTER THREE
Saylor
As I made my way to the I-10, that thick manmade artery cutting through the continent, I knew where I was going. I plucked my phone from my purse and dialed my cousin.
“Brayden,” I choked, hating my own rambling distress. “I did it, I left him. He’s-fuck, it’s bad. It’s about ten o’clock right now. Damn, I really need to talk to you. School’s finished. Me and Devin are finished. California tastes like shit. I can’t stay here. And Bray, I’d rather swallow acid than face the Emblem peeps right. So I’m heading in your direction. Call me back. Please Brayden, call me back.”
A curse escaped my lips as I threw the phone down. Brayden was notorious for failing to answer his cell phone, or even keep proper track of it. I had no idea if he would receive that message.
Southern California sped by and I bid it a bitter good riddance. As far as I knew, my dad had been planning on driving out in two days to attend my graduation. Somebody would need to tell him it wouldn’t be necessary unless he wanted to sit there and watch everyone else’s kid walk across the stage. It didn’t matter, the ceremony. It was a bunch of preening and photographic flashes. It was the culmination of a long journey that for most would end in crushing debt and disappointed hopes. I kept telling myself that. My father would certainly be happier to have the obligation removed. Instead he could remain in Emblem for the weekend, ensconced in the flabby arms of whatever big breasted bimbo had attached herself to his shiny Dodge rims. As for my mother, well, she was in the throes of a new love substitute anyway. She had sighed with happy relief when I said, “No ma, don’t sweat it. You don’t have to be there.”
I pictured her with a cigarette dangling out of the left side of her mouth as she gushed. “So proud of you, Say. I sent you a Target gift card.”
“Oh god, Target. I love Target,” I had told her, trying to sound not at all bitchy. “They undoubtedly have the best toilet paper selection.”
If you had an ounce of enterprise in you, then Emblem, Arizona wasn’t a place you wanted to stay. As long as I could remember, my desire to leave the bowels of my desert hometown approached zealotry. Of my peers, a third would end up working at the nearby state prison complex and perhaps live stilted, unhappy lives like my parents. Statistically, another third would succumb to the pull of drugs and other turmoil, perhaps winding up incarcerated themselves and poignantly guarded by former classmates. The final third would move on to college and something resembling brighter futures. But even most of them would choose to remain in the state. Brayden was enrolling at ASU. My whole life had been spent in that scorching prison town seventy miles south of Phoenix. I wanted out, way out. Years of diligent, single-minded work vaulted me to the top of my class and the scholarship to attend Occidental College was the sum of my dreams. I didn’t even offer Emblem one final, affectionate backwards glance the day I left.
The landscape of California was an improvement over the landscape of central Arizona. I felt immediately liberated from the oppressive heat and from the cast of tiredly familiar characters who had populated my world from birth. I didn’t like to be reminded where I came from. My new peers all appeared to live breezy lives atop pairs of three hundred dollar shoes. I spent summers immersed in work study and piloted my sputtering vehicle to the beach every time I could scrape together ten dollars for the gas.
As for my parents, they seemed to grow immediately accustomed to a child free existence. My mother dated more than any free spirited twenty year old. I visited them in Emblem a few awkward times a year. We talked on the phone sometimes. It was enough.
The only sore spot was Brayden. I missed him. I missed him a lot. Over the last few years I felt like distance had cost us some of the closeness we’d always shared. He had a girlfriend he seemed serious about and one more year left at ASU to complete a graduate program in mechanical engineering. I still thought of him as my best friend.
Another sad surprise was that boys on the coast were still boys. Dating was a routinely disappointing endeavor punctuated by the occasional orgasm. When I met Devin the spring semester of my junior year he seemed too good to be true. He was too good to be true.
Somewhere in Riverside County I considered pulling over and giving Brayden another try, perhaps messaging him through Facebook. After all it wasn’t really fair to descend on the guy’s game with no warning. I was a bruised bag of ruin with no plan. Bray had a life of his own out there in Tempe. He had, what’s-her-name…Millie. I’d seen her pictures on Facebook; a pretty Asian girl with long black hair and a dazzling smile. She wore white dresses a lot and majored in one of those high concept disciplines, like Anthropological Social Economics or some shit.
My hands tightened on the steering wheel as I crossed the border from California back to the state of my birth. It was nearly midnight and I should have been exhausted but I wasn’t. I felt as if I had spent years in the black oblivion of a nightmare and I was finally awake.
I shifted and focused on the blackness ahead. I swear the loneliest stretch of road in the United States has to be the I-10 between the California border and the fringes of western Phoenix. Academically I knew that wasn’t true. There were whole swaths of empty country in those vast states of the far north. But just then, beaten and quietly praying to something I didn’t think existed past the glittering stars, it seemed there was no other surface of the earth quite as bleak.
About fifty miles outside of Quartzsite I realized I had to pee pretty desperately. I passed two desolate rest stops that had been boarded up for whatever reason and I cursed the whims of local bureaucrats who evidently cared nothing for the bladders of distressed women.
Finally, the tiny lights of the west valley were near enough to touch. I pulled over at a QT station within sight of the nuclear power plant. When I breezed through the doors, hunting for the bathroom, the counter attendant gawked at me. At first I thought it had to be because of my swollen face but when I sat on the toilet and glanced down I saw my left nipple playing peek-a-boo with the low neckline of my tee shirt.
“Hot mess,” I grumbled, shoving it back where it belonged, thinking about how helpful it would be if I had a bra on.
Once my bladder was empty I inspected myself in the mirror, wincing as my eyes shrank under the piercing ceiling lights. It seemed whoever had decided on those industrial bulbs was either hoping to inflict mass blindness or else root out a few covert vampires.
So my jaw was swollen and yes, it would be bruised. I pushed my hair behind my ears and filled the sink with cold water. As I bent over and bathed my face I remembered the disgusting feeling of Devin’s violation. I wondered if it counted as rape if the guy couldn’t finish because someone hit him with a table. As I blotted my face with a paper towel I decided that it did.
“Fucker,” I muttered, startling an elderly Hispanic lady who was just coming through the door. She smiled at me nervously and it occurred to me that with my damaged face, mismatched clothes and wild hair I could be taken for a prostitute. Or one of those meth heads whose PSA posters serve as cautionary tales in public transit stations.
I rooted around in my purse and found a comb. As I sorted through the tangles in my hair I tried not to listen to the tinkling sound of a stranger peeing. The woman didn’t look at me when she emerged. She washed her hands and exited, leaving a five dollar bill on the cracked vanity. I almost chased after her to return it. I wanted to tell her I wasn’t hopeless. I was a goddam college graduate with an adequate body and a novel in progress that somehow was going to amount to something. Convenience store charity was wasted on someone with my prospects. Yeah, I almost said all that.
Then I changed my mind and used the five to buy a cherry Icee and a bag of Doritos. It was a good meal.
While my car was filling up I called Brayden again.
“Jesus, Bray,” I said to his voicemail, somewhat exasperated that he was the only twenty two year old in the world who didn’t stay connected at all times. “Anyway, I’m slightly less fragile than I was the last time I left you a message. But I’m still on my way with the handful of things I could carry in the trunk of my half dead vehicle. It is midnight now and I can see the lights of the nuclear power plant. Know what that means? It means I’ll be in Tempe in a little over an hour. Christ, I need a shower. I hope you’re not out of town or something because I have no other friends here and if you’re not around I’ll have to find a nice Walmart parking lot to cozy up in until morning. Love you, man.”
The Phoenix metro area is huge. Perhaps not Los Angeles kind of huge, but still. You’ve got to drive an awful long time to get from end to end. After gliding forever through the west valley, I saw the towering structures of downtown Phoenix and then, finally, the fringes of the east side.
I had already plugged Brayden’s address into my phone and as I passed the bold outline of Sun Devil Stadium I knew I was getting close. Arizona State University was a shining beacon of liberty to Emblem kids.
The area surrounding ASU always has been and probably always will be a circus of apartments and fast food dives. As I drove hesitantly through the Palm Desert Apartment complex it looked like Mardi Gras. People hung off balconies and meandered about in lurching, intoxicated glory. I poked my head out of the car window and called out to a quartet of blondes.
“Hey, do any of you know where apartment 2163 is?”
“BWAHAHAHAHA!” they responded and then one of them bent over and vomited into an oleander bush.
“Thanks,” I waved. “Thanks a lot!”
You’d think an apartment complex roughly the size of the city of Buffalo might have a map posted somewhere. But if it existed then I couldn’t find it. Nor could I clearly read any of the building numbers as I rolled passed and squinted. Finally I gave up, parking the Civic in a far flung corner that looked as good a place to start as any. In an act of sheer futility I called Brayden again. Of course he didn’t answer. Of course.
Warily I watched a pair of hulking men prowling around, drunk out of their gourd. I wasn’t eager to risk being manhandled so close on the heels of the Devin encounter. After fumbling around in my backseat I found a dark hooded sweatshirt and pulled it on. Though it was easily ninety degrees outside, I was aiming to look like a tough guy who might be up to no good in the dark. It might keep the creepers away. I tucked my hair under the hood and hunched my shoulders as I started to make my way through the maze of dwellings.
After about five minutes of aimless wandering I concluded it was impossible for anyone to find anything in this labyrinth of stucco. I sank against the nearest wall with a dejected sigh. When I looked up I saw the numbers 2163.
My Hallelujah moment was, however, short lived when I banged on the door for a solid ten minutes and no one answered. I leaned my head against the door, feeling every bit of energy drain away.
“Don’t cry, Saylor,” I soothed myself. I hated to cry. “Don’t do it.”
After several moments of blank staring in which the meaning of the universe eluded me, I decided I should try to break in As I peered into the dim living room I glimpsed several framed pictures of Brayden and Millie so I knew for sure this was their place. I yanked on the window frame. Brayden was the forgetful sort. He might have left it unlocked. I yanked harder.
I expected the window might be locked after all. I did not expect to be abruptly tackled to the ground by a mountain. It was all too reminiscent of Devin’s attack. Even as I landed on the sharp gravel I let out a raging shriek and kicked out with all my might.
“Shit,” swore the mountain in disbelief, “you’re a girl.”
I felt myself being pulled up by strong arms attached to a body. And my, what a body. It had a chest with something tattooed in Latin across the muscled expanse. It also had shoulders with more ink that were glued to strong arms. “Are you okay?” it asked me and I nodded mutely, staring at the eruption of maleness that I could appreciate even in my trying circumstances. Then I blinked in disbelief when I saw that the body also had a face. It was one I recognized.
“Out of the frying pan and into the fire,” I muttered, shaking my head. I crossed my arms and looked him in the eye. “Cord Gentry. What the hell are you doing here?”